Founders & Staff - The Caldecott Association

The Staff and Founders Timeline, and a request for help

This Founders and Staff Timeline is very incomplete. It is a work in progress. The impossible goal is to record all the adults who were part of the Caldecott Community from its beginnings in 1911, with a bit of information about them. It falls far short of that! Please help us - if you remember an adult member of the Community, or come across a reference to someone, please share your memories and information.

As you scroll down you may notice that the Timeline falls into two sections.

In the first section, the Founders and Staff appear in chronological order, based on when they first joined the Community.

In the second section, the Staff appear in alphabetical order. This is because we don't yet have their dates. We would be very grateful for any dates you can help us with.

We would also be grateful for photographs. Do you have any you would be able to share? Where you see a picture of a building instead of a person, it means we don't have a photograph for the staff member yet, and have substituted a photograph of the Caldecott they were part of: Cartwright Gardens, Charlton Court, Goff's Oak, The Mote, Hyde House, or Mersham-le-Hatch.

Caldecott Community Founders and Staff

Leila Rendel

Leila Rendel was, at this time, twenty-eight, and had been trained in 'Swedish gymnastics', a subject which she subsequently taught in a teachers' training college and for which she became an inspector. In her early twenties she was greatly interested in Margaret Macmillan's pioneer nursery-school work. She always had a passion for teaching and Baroness Stocks, her cousin, remembers that, while still a young child, Leila Rendel had insisted on teaching her the catechism. Her attachment to the established Church was not fixed. Her religion was of a practical kind and she eventually joined the Society of Friends ...

Ruth Rowson

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I first arrived one wintry February afternoon in 1936. The Community was then housed in The Mote; a huge imposing late Georgian mansion standing firmly and solidly in the middle of many acres of park-land, whose western boundaries touched the outskirts of Maidstone. There was a fine view to the south, open park and magnificent trees to a distant lake. I was not to know then that every blade of grass, speck of gravel on the drives, and shape and size of every tree and bush would become as familiar to me as the shoes I walked in.

Phyllis Potter

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At the age of twenty-one, Phyllis, who from all accounts was a strikingly handsome young woman, dark-haired and with a searching eye which missed little, went up to West Hill College, near Birmingham, to take a Teacher-Training course in Sunday School work....

Winifred Vaizey

Another young woman, Winifred Vaizey, also sent to Charlton, first on a visit in the Summer Term of 1919; then returned in September to teach a group of five to seven year olds. She also "took" walks and recalls some hoppers from the East End of London and in Kent for the annual hop-picking, running out cf their huts and pressing pennies into the Caldecott children's hands.

Daisy Campbell

In January 1920 another young woman, Daisy Campbell, joined the Charlton Staff. She was the sister of a doctor, Jessie Maxwell, whose husband later became Chairman of the Prison Commission and had a good deal to do with the Community; he was to become a great friend of Leila Rendel. She had known the Campbell family in Scotland for some years and she used Dr. Maxwell for medical inspections of the children in those early days.

Kathleen Syer

"...and there was Kathleen Syer, who was a friend of my aunt's at the harmonium..."

Roma Easton (Miss E)

"I first joined the Community in 1923 having been briefed in London by Miss Potter as to my duties with the Nursery Children and also the part I was expected to play in the wider life at Charlton Court. I had had some experience of Day Nurseries in the Hoxton slums and had had a training, so I thought I might manage the first but was doubtful as to the latter.

Ethel Davies (Miss Dave)

Ethel Davies was born in Liverpool in 1897, the youngest of the two daughters of a well-to-do Ship's Chandler; there were three sons of the marriage. They were brought up in a fine old terraced eighteenth century house, one in a long street that runs down to the Mersey and the Docks; once an elegant street lived in by prosperous families but now, like much of the Liverpool of that century, the houses are let out as single rooms and flats, and are shabby and with an air of decay.

Betty Hillyer

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After the war, [Ethel Davies] eventually met up with another young woman, Betty Hillyer, a doctor's daughter from Somerset who had also a Domestic Science Training at Gloucester...

Read more c. 1927

Marjorie Seaver

"I answered an advertisement for a temporary vacancy for someone to look after a group of children out of school hours in addition to housework and a small amount of teaching."
Read more 1930

Elizabeth Lloyd

My life at the Caldecott Community covered a span of thirty-five years: a long time even measured by the standards of those pre-war years. This information is often greeted now with incredulity, then horror, then a reluctant grudging admiration that anyone in their right mind could stay for so long in one place: but there were others who had already been at the Community for some years before I came and who left after I did.
Read more 1936-1971

Heiner

The only male member of staff at the Community, when I first went there, was a young German, and what he contributed to the well-being of the boys I never knew, as what he really enjoyed was the company of the young female staff.
Read more c. 1936-1939

Hedy (also Hedi, Hedwig, Heidi) Schwartz

Read more c.1938 -c 1940 (?)

Aggie Travers

Read more 1941-1967

Winifred Watson

Winifred Watson was a member of staff and in the 50s taught the Junior Study children aged 7-9 yrs in the stableblock.
Read more 1950s

James King

"In the early 1960s Leila Rendel, the founder and director of the Caldecott Community (now Foundation) was looking for a successor to run her inspiring therapeutic community for children. James King, who joined in 1961 and soon became team manager of a group of 15 boys and girls....."
Read more 1961-1992

Michael Jinks

“In the 1980s when Michael Jinks arrived to be a new Director of the Community he introduced the psychodynamic approach as practiced at the Mulberry Bush School and the Cotswold Community.”
Read more 1980-1996

Jane Abbey

"Jane Abbey was a sort of assistant to Joe Marshall in the Colt House in my last year or two. I think before that she had dealt with senior study girls and maybe was at Lacton Hall for a time. She stayed on after I left and I always made a point of seeing her when I visited Caldecott for my annual recitals."
Read more tbc

David Carver

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Read more tbc

Carol Clark

The Community's Secretary played a very important part, being, as far as I could judge, chauffeur, typist, office manager and organiser of everything that no one else could or wanted to do. She did most of the driving and was constantly out with Miss Leila. She too remained at the Community for a very great many years, until her death in the fifties.
Read more tbc

Major Clark

Read more tbc

Mike Clover

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Read more tbc

Diana Dee

"It's an odd thing that we often find out more about someone after they’ve died, and the stories that they either didn’t tell or we never sought to discover during their life. Like the ‘L’ in her name, I had picked up little bits of information from my Mum, Rosemary, or from Diana herself, but never had to piece it altogether until now."
Read more tbc

Desmond Draper

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Read more tbc

Dick Edwardes

Read more tbc

John Gladstone

Read more tbc

Mr. Hilton

share your memories
Read more tbc

Hilton, Pauline

share your memories
Read more tbc

Diana Howarth

Read more tbc

Jock Mackintosh

" His accent was as Scottish as his name (his nickname was of course “Jock”). A very friendly chap. "
Read more tbc

Miss Mahon

Read more tbc

Joe Marshall

share your memories
Read more tbc

Desiree Martin

Down from London, every week, came the teacher of Eurhythmics, Desiree Martin. I have named her as she must be internationally known, and known by hundreds of ex-pupils of hers in this country in the dance, music and theatre world, for she later taught at the Royal Ballet School and the Royal College of Music.
Read more tbc

Pat Meara

"Miss Meara (pronounced Mara) was Australian, or at any rate had lived there. She did not have much of an Australian accent but did not quite sound pure English either. In my later years at Caldecott, she looked after the upstairs dormitories in the West Wing. She was small, slightly dark-skinned and had, I would say, a very strong-willed personality."
Read more tbc

Muriel Morris

Miss Morris and Miss Devenish were both determined that the end of term concert, scheduled for 15 December, should go ahead. Between them, they could handle the choirs and the recorders, while they relied on me to rehearse the string players and the orchestra. For Miss Morris, especially, it was unbreakable that no child currently taking lessons would “give up” in Betty’s absence. If they wanted to give up, they would sort it out with Betty when she returned.
Read more tbc

Joyce Murdin

More than the playroom, though, I remember Miss Murdin for long walks, or sometimes shorter ones where we simply stopped and played word games. There was a clearing just a little way down from the gate to the Deer Park, about half way towards the Heron Pond, on the right. It contained a tree with a branch on which you could swing and another that even the most junior climbers could tackle. There was usually a log pile, too, on which we could clamber. Miss Murdin called this the “Parson’s Cat Wood”, a name given it by a former Junior Study boy because Miss Murdin’s little party invariably stopped there to play “the Parson’s Cat”.
Read more tbc

Nurse Nobbs

Read more tbc

Betty Rayment

The year at Caldecott had to be lived in order to experience every big event. During the summer term Betty Rayment drove herself and all the children she taught to produce an extremely well rehearsed concert in the library. Besides soloists on recorder, piano and violin, there was also an orchestra, reinforced by a few adults and the ever popular item on the glockenspiel...
Read more tbc

Margaret Robson

Mrs. Robson was one of the people who make me feel it was a privilege to be at Caldecott at that time. She taught the youngest group in the Junior school so she, together with Miss Murdin, ensured that my first year passed in firm but kindly hands.
Read more tbc

Miss Ruhl (died 1989)

The Junior Study girls’ dormitories were looked after by Miss Ruhl. I never heard her first name – other staff called her “Ruhly”. She was tallish with dark hair, a deep gruff voice and was slightly deaf. Her forbidding exterior suggested another Miss Diana and she suffered no nonsense, but an essential kindliness shone through.
Read more left 1967

Don Sanford

Read more tbc

Helen Stocks

They ate in the kitchen except on Sundays, when they were invited to lunch in the dining-room, all except Helen, who remained in the kitchen to eat, and eventually wash-up.
Read more tbc

Audrey Watson

"It was a difficult period for the Community. Apart from Miss Leila’s own semi-withdrawal and her death not long after, a whole host of long-standing staff members – Miss E., Miss Travers, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Ruhl, Mr. Gladstone and Miss Hill herself – all felt the time had come to retire. Not all at once, but over a period of about three years the shape of the Community had profoundly changed.
Read more tbc

Joan Watson

"Relatively few ex-Caldecottians will remember Miss Joan Watson. I don’t think her stay was very long. She had been in charge of the middle class in the junior school for a few years when I arrived – the first class was in the hands of Margaret Robson, while Desmond Draper was headmaster and taught the higher class."
Read more tbc

Founders & Staff timeline

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