Journal · June 29, 2023
A change at Tarrant Place
From July 1, Caroline Rendle becomes managing director of Larchcombe, the third generation of the family to run it. Joan Rendle becomes chair.
On Saturday, July 1, after thirty-six years, I will hand the running of Larchcombe to my daughter, Caroline, who becomes managing director. I become chair, which I am told means that I may still come in on Tuesdays and read the files, and must stop answering the duty line at two in the morning.
Caroline joined the agency as a consultant in 2010, after two years in London learning how a large household actually works from the inside, which is to say from the back stairs. She ran our temporary and seasonal placements for five years and has been deputy managing director since 2019. Most of our households already know her. Many of the staff we place were interviewed by her. She is better at this than I was at her age, and better at some of it than I am now.
Nothing about the way we work will change. Our terms remain our terms; our confidentiality agreements remain what they are; every household we place with will still be visited before we place with it; and every member of staff we place will still read and sign the Residence Code. Caroline has some plans of her own, among them putting our records online for households and staff, which my mother would have found baffling and I find only slightly less so.
My mother ran this agency from 1961 to 1987, and I have run it since. Between us we have had sixty-two years. I hope Caroline has at least as many, and enjoys them as much.