[1] Leila Berg wrote in 1971 "I remember Olive Kendon beaming when someone in a conference coffee-bar happily described her as 'an elderly juvenile delinquent'.
"[2] She was born 5 March 1897,[3] the granddaughter of Joseph James Kendon (died 1903), a Baptist minister and founder of Bethany School, Goudhurst, in Kent.
[8] Olive Kendon from early experience of the type of evangelical missionary work that had brought her father to minister in Kent, from London, concluded that it was intrusive and to be avoided.
[10] There she made a long-term friendship with the Swiss journalist and writer, Betty Wehrli-Knobel, who describes Kendon in her 1984 memoir Wegstrecken as a language teacher, and unforgettable ("nie zu vergessende Freundin aus der College-Zeit").
[15][3] In 1940 the Ladies' College, Goudhurst—the girls' boarding school in Kent associated with Bethany School—moved in a wartime evacuation to the north Midlands, firstly to Charnes Hall, Eccleshall, Staffordshire.
[14][19] In the wartime situation, a group of children in a working-class neighbourhood themselves renovated and decorated a run-down house, then using it for activities they chose themselves, with light adult supervision.
[28] Olive Kendon was interviewed on Woman's Hour, the BBC Radio 2 programme, on 28 May 1970, with Jocelyn Ryder-Smith, and spoke about the Children's House Society she had founded.
[32] Filming directed by Fred Fawbert, for Chorley Training College, went on in 1972 of Olive Kendon at home in Curtisden Green, and at the Sherwood Park Children's House.
[37] Olive Kendon died in June 1977, leaving an autobiographical work with an incomplete final chapter, then edited by others including Lorna Ridgway.
He mentioned her time in a wheelchair as a child, and the fact that she required a special diet; her teaching methods as influenced by Montessori education; her skill as a story-teller.