By Mike Smith

Two collections that have arrived at the Museum have actually been with us for over twenty years.

They were collections given to us as a ‘fledgling set-up’ but, with the loss of our first home in Milton Keynes, they were never updated and sorted. This fascinating job is now being done and revealing some remarkable treasures.

Fortunately, these two large collections are one each from men’s and women’s hockey. How grateful we are to those far-sighted hockey enthusiasts who retained all their hockey possessions.

The women’s collection was passed to us at the time of Marjorie Pollard’s death and is a fascinating insight into the women’s game from its start right through to the 60’s/70’s. As editor of Hockey Field she had a privileged access to the game and that is now passed to us. Amongst the gems are the oldest known women’s photo, some films from the 1930’s, lots of books as she was a prolific author and masses of stuff from her times editing Hockey Field.

From the men’s side came Bob Mason’s collection. Bob was England Team Secretary throughout the 1970’s and collected material from before and after he was team secretary.

He too had a good library but the jewels were his England and GB men’s teams and results records. Over many years he painstakingly compiled a complete record of all matches, including team lists, scorers, umpires, management, etc, and then cumulative results against all the nations. A remarkable piece of work that will be invaluable in our statistics section.

February 2014