The Caldecott Foundation, formerly known as the Caldecott Community, is a UK charity which provides therapeutic care and education for disadvantaged and vulnerable children. It has been based in the Borough of Ashford in Kent since 1947 and operates seven registered children's homes in Kent and Nottinghamshire as well the Caldecott Foundation School. The foundation's roots go back to 1911, when Leila Rendel founded a day nursery in the St Pancras district of London which catered to the children of women working in a nearby factory. It later evolved into a pioneering boarding school in Kent, first for working class children, and then for distressed and vulnerable children who had been placed into care. Rendel named the community after the children's book illustrator Randolph Caldecott whose pictures adorned the walls of the St Pancras nursery. The foundation was officially incorporated in 1946 as the Caldecott Community. Its name was changed to the Caldecott Foundation in 1997. History as the Caldecott Community The Caldecott Comminuty began its life in 1911 when Leila Rendel and her friend Phyllis Potter set up their own nursery school based on the progressive ideas of Margaret McMillan and Leila's aunt Edith Rendel who was an active critic of the English Poor Laws, a pioneer girls' club leader and a militant suffragist. Their school was located at Cartwright Gardens in St Pancras and mainly catered to the children of women working in a nearby matchbox factory. An admirer of Randolph Caldecott's children's book illustrations, Rendel named the nursery school in his honour and adorned its walls with a frieze of his pictures. Rendel's grandfather, Alexander Meadows Rendel, provided them with an endowment and further donations were received from her large circle of family and friends. By 1914 the school was well-established with a written constitution and Percy Nunn as its chairman. Princess Louise served as its president. The continued German bombing of London and subsequent condemnation of the St Pancras building by the local council in 1917 led the Caldecott Community to move with its teachers and children to Charlton Court, a large country house near Maidstone. In the process it became the first co-educational boarding school in the UK for working-class children. When the lease on Charlton Court expired in 1924, the school moved to another country house in Goffs Oak, a village in Hertfordshire and remained there for the next eight years. During its time