Eileen Caddy

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Eileen Caddy
Eileen Caddy, 1981
Born	August 26, 1917 Alexandria, Egypt
Died	December 13, 2006 Findhorn, Scotland
Spouse	1. Andrew Combe 2. Peter Caddy
Parents	Albert Jessop, Muriel Jessop
Children	Richard, Jenny, Mary-Elizabeth, Suzanne, Penny, Christopher, Jonathan, David

Eileen Caddy MBE (August 26, 1917 – December 13, 2006) is best known as one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation community near the village of Findhorn on the Moray Firth in northeast Scotland.

She was born Eileen Marion Jessop in Alexandria, Egypt, daughter of a director of Barclays Bank DCO.

Educated at a domestic college, she ran an Oxfordshire pub with her brother for four years. She then married Squadron Leader Andrew Combe in 1939 and had five children with him. Following a divorce, she married Squadron Leader Peter Caddy in 1957, with whom she had three children. Peter died in a car crash in 1994, several years after their marriage failed.^[1]

In the early 1950s Eileen Caddy was in the circle that formed around Sheena Govan, daughter of the founders of the Faith Mission, and a former wife of Peter Caddy. From 1957 until 1962 Eileen Caddy co-managed hotels in Scotland including the Cluny Hill Hotel near Forres, Moray.

Following a period of unemployment from 1962 onwards, Eileen Caddy and her husband Peter and their colleague Dorothy Maclean began to practice organic gardening as a means of supplementing their family's food supply. The garden flourished to such a remarkable extent that it eventually attracted national attention, and was featured in a BBC radio programme of 1965. Its supporters included Sir George Trevelyan and Lady Eve Balfour of the Soil Association.

Beginning in 1965 a community, eventually known as the Findhorn Foundation community, began to form around the work and spiritual practices of Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. The community was featured in several television documentaries by the BBC, starting in 1969. Most recently it was profiled by the Channel 4 documentary series, The Haven, in 2004.

Eileen Caddy's works include God Spoke to Me, a volume of inspirational messages published in various formats from 1966 onwards, and an autobiography titled Flight into Freedom and Beyond.

For services to spiritual inquiry, Eileen Caddy was in 2004 awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The award was presented by the Lord-Lieutenant of Moray, Air Vice-Marshal George Chesworth.