Алан Лоусон Мейкок

Alan Maycock went up to Clare College, Cambridge after the Armistice 1918 to study engineering, and later worked abroad for several years. He returned to Cambridge in 1931 with his wife Enid to serve as director of the University Appointments Board, where he remained for 33 years until his retirement.

His interest in Ferrar was awakened at Clare; and once he and Enid were settled in Cambridge, they sometimes drove out to Little Gidding for a picnic. He also read all the original documents which were then available relating to the first community, and pieced together a picture of its life. His researches bore fruit in two books: a biography of Nicholas Ferrar, published in 1938, taking the story up to Nicholas's death in 1637; and the 'Chronicles of Little Gidding', describing the last twenty years of the community.

On his retirement Alan became Keeper of the Old Library at Magdalene. There, some years earlier, a number of dusty parcels containing the private letters of Nicholas Ferrar had been discovered. Alan was in the midst of cataloguing these letters when he died in 1968.