A great friend and supporter of the Murray Downland Trust, Richard had long been our adviser on reserves management, drawing upon his long experience. He was a Trustee of the MDT between 2010 and 2014 and continued to give talks on behalf of the Trust, always attracting a loyal and enthusiastic audience.
For 57 years Richard had been sharing his love and knowledge of flora and fauna, and his favourite walking routes, with readers of the local Sussex press. His first weekly column was published in 1964 and only stopped in April 2022 due to illness.
He was born in North Devon and moved to Chichester from Norfolk in 1963 to work as the manager of Kingley Vale Nature Reserve – arriving on his BSA motorbike with a couple of tins of baked beans and £5. While Kingley Vale was his base, his role with the Nature Conservancy saw him work on reserves across the South Downs, including Castle Hill and Lullington Heath in East Sussex. At Kingley Vale he carried out continuous long-term weekly monitoring – and continued until 2018 though retired – of breeding birds, butterflies and plants, particularly wild orchid colonies. Thousands of visiting school children have benefitted from his enthusiastic teaching. He retired, aged 60, in 1995.
Richard was the fifth child of author Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter, Salar the Salmon, The Flax of Dream, the 15-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight and many other books – but was brought up on the north Norfolk coast on Old Hall Farm at Stiffkey, owned and worked by his father for the duration of the Second World War.
He was educated at St Michael’s College, a Worcestershire choir school, and Blundell’s School, Tiverton, Devon; but not a scholar, his interest from earliest years was that of a lone wanderer watching birds and observing natural history.
After leaving school he joined the RAF and served for five years in radar stations in England, Iraq, Jordan and Cyprus, and awarded the General Service Medal during the Suez Crisis.
On leaving the RAF he worked in forestry and on National Trust nature reserves in north Norfolk and Suffolk to gain experience to fit him for a career in what was then the Nature Conservancy, later known as English Nature and now Natural England.
His father encouraged him to write, and while writing his first book, The Dawn is my Brother, and working during the day at forestry, Richard wrote a daily wildlife correspondent article from 1957-9 for the Daily Mail. He also wrote for many other national newspapers and magazines over the years.
He was instrumental in gaining special status for Chichester Harbour by preparing a report on its natural history value in the late 1960s.
Apart from natural history his main interests – indeed, passions – were classical music, vintage cars and literature, and he had a large and varied library reflecting these, as well as three Alvis TA14 classic cars.
Richard was married to Anne who manages the Henry Williamson Literary Estate. They have a son, Brent, and a daughter Bryony. Richard and Anne were living in an isolated old gamekeeper’s cottage in the middle of a wood on the West Dean Estate, formerly owned by the late Edward James, the eccentric millionaire patron of surrealist art, with whom they were friends, in an area which is a nature reserve under the aegis of the Sussex Wildlife Trust, and where he also carried out weekly breeding bird monitoring and was Chairman of its management committee.
For 57 years Richard had been sharing his love and knowledge of flora and fauna, and his favourite walking routes, with readers of the local Sussex press. His first weekly column was published in 1964 and only stopped in April 2022 due to illness.
He was born in North Devon and moved to Chichester from Norfolk in 1963 to work as the manager of Kingley Vale Nature Reserve – arriving on his BSA motorbike with a couple of tins of baked beans and £5. While Kingley Vale was his base, his role with the Nature Conservancy saw him work on reserves across the South Downs, including Castle Hill and Lullington Heath in East Sussex. At Kingley Vale he carried out continuous long-term weekly monitoring – and continued until 2018 though retired – of breeding birds, butterflies and plants, particularly wild orchid colonies. Thousands of visiting school children have benefitted from his enthusiastic teaching. He retired, aged 60, in 1995.
Richard was the fifth child of author Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter, Salar the Salmon, The Flax of Dream, the 15-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight and many other books – but was brought up on the north Norfolk coast on Old Hall Farm at Stiffkey, owned and worked by his father for the duration of the Second World War.
He was educated at St Michael’s College, a Worcestershire choir school, and Blundell’s School, Tiverton, Devon; but not a scholar, his interest from earliest years was that of a lone wanderer watching birds and observing natural history.
After leaving school he joined the RAF and served for five years in radar stations in England, Iraq, Jordan and Cyprus, and awarded the General Service Medal during the Suez Crisis.
On leaving the RAF he worked in forestry and on National Trust nature reserves in north Norfolk and Suffolk to gain experience to fit him for a career in what was then the Nature Conservancy, later known as English Nature and now Natural England.
His father encouraged him to write, and while writing his first book, The Dawn is my Brother, and working during the day at forestry, Richard wrote a daily wildlife correspondent article from 1957-9 for the Daily Mail. He also wrote for many other national newspapers and magazines over the years.
He was instrumental in gaining special status for Chichester Harbour by preparing a report on its natural history value in the late 1960s.
Apart from natural history his main interests – indeed, passions – were classical music, vintage cars and literature, and he had a large and varied library reflecting these, as well as three Alvis TA14 classic cars.
Richard was married to Anne who manages the Henry Williamson Literary Estate. They have a son, Brent, and a daughter Bryony. Richard and Anne were living in an isolated old gamekeeper’s cottage in the middle of a wood on the West Dean Estate, formerly owned by the late Edward James, the eccentric millionaire patron of surrealist art, with whom they were friends, in an area which is a nature reserve under the aegis of the Sussex Wildlife Trust, and where he also carried out weekly breeding bird monitoring and was Chairman of its management committee.