16 August 2025
James King officially retired as Caldecott director on 31 January 1993 as had been arranged.
Staff had taken time to produce two items to present to him then to remind him (were that even needed) in particular of numerous children at Caldecott.
One was an album from Caldecott School with many drawings and goodwill messages from the children and 178 photos of children plus some staff. This "labour of love" was compiled by teacher Peter Hodgson. He and his wife Jan joined the staff in 1985 (after retirement at Christmas 1984 of Desmond Draper and his wife Ann).
The Hodgsons were keen on taking photographs. Peter said that he had included all the children currently at the school and had "raided" his personal photo albums for some recent others. Many were photos specially taken for the album, several were from the previous summer such as at camps. The earliest were at Caldecott fete 1988 on the lawns at Hatch.
There were captions naming most of those shown, often just forenames of children but sometimes more (some had the same forename). This album was passed to the PETT archive centre after James King died in 2017. The Mulberry Bush Organisation took over the archive centre in Gloucestershire, which is visited by some CA members.
The second presentation album was a framed collage of pics of the heads of many Caldecott children, most likely cut out from extra prints of photos taken by the Hodgsons from 1985 to late 1992. Even if they had access to older photos, they were unlikely to include ex-children not known by them.
The framed item was later damaged. James King came to a Caldecott Association meeting and handed it over to be repaired and then passed to the archive centre at the next visit. Before doing so CA members photographed the collage, putting a scan (with enlargements of the portions) onto this private FB page on 14 September 2015. The collage does not give names, but some of you identified several children, sometimes with the groups - Hornbeam, West Wing, Oaklea, Mayfield, Lakeview, Garden House, Lacton House (the faces do not seem to be from the older teenagers of Lacton Hall).
It was soon apparent to some that the pics did not include children from the 1970's, even though inevitably some faces might remind some of us of Caldecott children from our earlier times. Of course, we do have some colour photos from the 1970's, but I do not recall colour photos being run off dozens at a time at Hatch much before 1981.
When I belatedly took an interest in the archive (after I retired) and heard of these presentation items, I wondered if the pics might be of children at Caldecott known to James King over the years since he got a job there on 6 November 1961, but when I saw them in May 2024 it was quickly obvious that none of the children shown were known to me and so I had no personal interest in the items. However, when I joined FB that June (never previously going in for such social media) I reckoned that some ex-Caldecotts from 1988 to 1993 might be interested in the items. Of course, not many can spare time and expense of a special trip to Gloucestershire to see the first item, given that most of the archive (apart from pics of reunions) relates to Caldecott from its start in 1911 up to 1974.