Crockford's Clerical Directory

Crockford's Clerical Directory (Crockford) is the authoritative directory of the Anglican Communion in the United Kingdom, containing details of English, Welsh and Irish benefices and churches, and biographies of around 26,000 clergy. It was first issued in 1858 by John Crockford, a London printer and publisher whose father – also named John – had been a Somerset schoolmaster.

Crockford is currently compiled and published for the Archbishops' Council by Church House Publishing. It covers in detail the whole of the Church of England (including the Diocese in Europe), the Church in Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the Church of Ireland, and it also gives some information – now more limited – about the world-wide Anglican Communion.

The actual title of the first edition was simply The Clerical Directory, but a footnote showed that it was published by John Crockford, 29 Essex Street, the Strand. The original publisher died suddenly in 1865, shortly before the appearance of the third edition of what had by then become Crockford’s Clerical Directory. For many subsequent issues the volumes were anonymously edited, but they were published under the imprint of Horace Cox – the nephew of John Crockford’s closest business associate, solicitor and publisher Edward William Cox (1809Ω–1879). (His family was probably quite unrelated to the Charles Cox who coincidentally was the publisher of Crockford's chief rival, the Clergy List.) Horace Cox died in 1918 and the title was subsequently sold in 1921 to the Oxford University Press, who continued as publishers right up until the early 1980s. For the 1985/86 issue publication was transferred to the Church Commissioners and their Central Board of Finance (who worked from their own administrative lists and databases). It is now collated by Church House Publishing.

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