Catalogue description The Hockaday Collections

The Collections are grouped in five sections:

(1) Hockaday Abstracts

(2) Hockaday Collections

(3) Hockaday Indexes [Library References: 17646-17648]

(4) Hockaday Topographical Extracts

(5) Hockaday Miscellanea

For an obituary notice by Roland Austin, which summarizes Hockaday's work, see B.& G.A.S. Trans., vol. 46 (1924), pp. 379-383.

The papers, abstracts and indexes prepared by Mr Frank Step Hockaday in his sixteen years' work on the diocesan records were presented after his death (25 August 1924) to the then Gloucester Public Library. They supplement and elucidate many of the records, particularly the 'GDR volumes'

It is to him that the preservation of the records must be largely attributed. He 'rediscovered' most of the early records in 1908 in an upper room of the Gloucester Diocesan Registry in District Probate building. His explanation was that they were probably placed there in 1858 at the time when testamentary jurisdiction was transferred from the consistory court to the newly-created probate court. 'At that time the premises in Pitt Street, Gloucester, were built, and as the registrar of the consistory court was appointed registrar, for life, of the probate registry, it is probable that the spare room in the new building was utilised for storing this mass of record on its transfer from the old registry in some old buildings built into the Infirmary arches, near to the playground of King's School and that it was allowed to remain there, until by death of those interested its whereabouts was forgotten.' (Gloucester Diocesan Magazine, vol. VI (1912), pp. 154-155). The Bishop of Gloucester and his Registrar eventually allowed him to move the records to a fire-proof building at his home in Lydney, where he worked on them for the rest of his life. He had hoped to see their publication through a Record Society, which, had it not been for the First War, would probably have been formed.