The Richard Jefferies Society and the Richard Jefferies Museum

The Richard Jefferies Society and the Richard Jefferies Museum are separate organisations bound together by a shared devotion to the life, work and memory of the writer Richard Jefferies (1848–1887), and their history has been closely intertwined since the Society’s earliest days.

Origins of the connection

The Richard Jefferies Society was founded in 1950 by Harold Adams, with the aim of maintaining Jefferies’ literary reputation and securing the future of his birthplace at Coate, near Swindon. That campaign succeeded: the farmhouse where Jefferies was born and raised, built by his grandfather in 1820 and farmed by his father, was purchased by Swindon Council in the 1920s and opened as a museum in 1960, in no small part thanks to the Society’s efforts.

How the two organisations work today

The Museum is now owned and managed by the Richard Jefferies Museum Trust, a separate (registered charity no. 1148966) , while the Society (registered charity no. 1042838) remains an independent membership organisation run by a volunteer Executive Council. Although distinct in governance, the two bodies work closely alongside one another. The Society has supplied much of the Museum’s collection of original features and family memorabilia, and Society volunteers help supervise the Museum’s open days for visitors.

Shared events and activities

The Museum also serves as a natural home for many of the Society’s activities. The Society’s Spring Lecture and Annual General Meeting are held at the Museum each year, and members regularly gather there for talks, guided walks around nearby Coate Water, and other events celebrating Jefferies’ life and writing. The Society continues to raise funds in support of the Museum, including recent appeals towards a new meeting room on site.

A shared purpose

Though administratively separate, the Society and the Museum are united by the same underlying mission: to preserve the memory of Richard Jefferies, to encourage new readers to discover his writing, and to protect the places — above all Coate, but also Liddington Hill, Burderop Down, and the wider landscape that shaped him — which inspired one of the great chroniclers of the English countryside.