Crockford's Clerical Directory 1929 - Digital Download or CD 

Every Anglican clergyman in Britain and the Empire, in one book. If your family tree includes a vicar, curate, canon, chaplain or bishop, this is the single most useful reference you can own for the interwar years.

Product Description

First published in 1858 and affectionately known as "the clergyman's Bible," Crockford's Clerical Directory is the definitive biographical register of the Anglican clergy. The 1929 edition captures the Church at the height of its interwar strength — thousands of clergy serving in every parish, cathedral, college, hospital, prison, prison ship, garrison and mission station of the British world.

Each biographical entry is a ready-made mini genealogy. Typically it records:

• Full name, academic degrees and university
• Date of ordination as deacon and priest — and the bishop who ordained him
• Every curacy and incumbency, with years, from first appointment to the present
• Chaplaincies, honours, preferments and retirement addresses
• The parish address in 1929

With a single entry you can trace a clergyman's working life across several decades — then use those dated appointments to anchor him in the 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921 censuses.

What's Inside — Section by Section

• The Alphabetical Clergy List — the heart of the volume: full biographical entries for the clergy of the Church of England, the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland and the Scottish Episcopal Church, arranged A–Z by surname.
• Colonial & Missionary Clergy — men serving overseas in Canada, Australia, India, Africa, the West Indies, China, Jerusalem and beyond. Invaluable if an ancestor "went out to the missions" and vanished from British records.
• Diocese-by-Diocese Parish Lists — every diocese, rural deanery, parish and benefice, with the name of the incumbent, the date of appointment, the patron of the living, population and church accommodation.
• Cathedral Establishments — deans, provosts, residentiary and honorary canons, minor canons, precentors, chancellors and treasurers of every cathedral.
• Universities, Colleges & Public Schools — heads of houses, professors, fellows and tutors in Holy Orders at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and the Welsh universities, plus public school chaplains.
• Chaplains' Lists — Royal Navy, Army (RAChD) and Royal Air Force chaplains; prison, hospital, workhouse, railway and seamen's mission chaplains. Essential for tracing clergy ancestors who served in the First World War and stayed in the forces.
• Religious Orders, Sisterhoods & Deaconesses — wardens and members of the Anglican communities (including the Community of the Resurrection, Cowley Fathers and others) and deaconess institutions — one of the few places female religious ancestors appear by name.
• Index of Parishes — look up a parish, find its priest.
• Patrons of Benefices — who controlled each living, crucial for understanding how and why your ancestor moved.
• Societies & Institutions — officers of the great Anglican bodies (SPG, CMS, Church Army and many more), plus diocesan officials, archdeacons and rural deans.

Bridge the Census Gap

This directory is a powerful substitute for the missing 1931 and 1941 censuses:

• The 1921 census (released 2022) is the last census you will see — the 1931 census for England & Wales was destroyed by fire in 1942, the 1941 census was never taken, and the 1951 census is closed until 2052. (Scotland's 1931 census was also destroyed.)
• The 1939 Register helps, but is incomplete.
• Crockford's 1929 drops an authoritative, dated "census point" right into the middle of that 30-year gap, fixing your ancestor to a named living and address in 1929 — and its career histories reach back to ordination, often the 1870s–1900s.

Bonus for Irish research: with the destruction of the Dublin Public Record Office in 1922, so much of Ireland's documentation is gone — yet here are Church of Ireland clergy with their ordination dates and appointments, a rare survivor.

Famous Names in the 1929 Edition

• Cosmo Gordon Lang — Archbishop of Canterbury
• William Temple — translated to the See of York in 1929; wartime Archbishop of Canterbury
• Arthur Winnington-Ingram — Bishop of London
• Hensley Henson — Bishop of Durham
• Ernest Barnes — former England XI mathematician turned Bishop of Birmingham
• Cyril Garbett — Bishop of Southwark; later Archbishop of York
• George Bell — Dean of Canterbury, translated to Chichester in 1929
• Charles Gore — retired Bishop of Oxford, giant of the Anglo-Catholic movement
• William Ralph Inge — "the Gloomy Dean" of St Paul's
• "Dick" Sheppard — Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields and pioneer BBC broadcaster
• "Tubby" Clayton — founder of Toc H, Vicar of All Hallows-by-the-Tower
• Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy — "Woodbine Willie," listed just before his death in March 1929
• Conrad Noel — the "Red Vicar" of Thaxted

Most entries, of course, are ordinary parish priests — precisely the men family historians are hunting for.

Easy to Navigate, Search, Translate & Listen

• Scanned page images preserve the original 1920s typography in high resolution.
• Because the directory is strictly alphabetical, it's easy to browse even without text recognition — jump to your surname range and read on.
• Modern PDF readers perform OCR on the fly (Adobe Acrobat, PDF-XChange, Foxit, Microsoft Edge and more), converting the printed page into live text so you can search and copy names straight into your family tree software.
• Google Lens, built into your browser or phone, can translate any page into dozens of languages.
• Text-to-speech: on desktop PCs, your PDF reader can read entries aloud — ideal for accessibility. (Read-aloud/OCR features are desktop PC features.)
• Tip: 1920s print OCRs very well, but unusual surnames are always worth double-checking by eye.

Format & Delivery

• Digital Download — instant delivery link; open in any PDF reader on Windows, Mac or tablet.
• CD Edition — posted worldwide; a permanent archival copy (requires a CD/DVD drive and any PDF reader).

Quick facts: Covers Church of England, Church in Wales, Church of Ireland, Scottish Episcopal and colonial dioceses · Thousands of clergy biographies · Original publication: 1929 (compiled 1928) · Supplied as high-resolution scanned images in PDF format.