R. Hansford Worth

Richard Hansford Worth (1868-1950) was a Plymouth civil engineer who became the main authority on Dartmoor's ancient monuments. He was the son of Richard Nicholls Worth, who has his own listing, and the two should not be mixed up. He was born in Plymouth on 5 November 1868, died there on 11 November 1950 and is buried at Shaugh Prior.

He started on the Great Western Railway engineering staff at Paddington, came back to Plymouth in 1890 and set up in private practice. He was also a working geologist. He joined the Plymouth Institution in 1888 (President in 1904) and was a founding member of the Marine Biological Association.

He joined the Devonshire Association in 1891, was its President in 1930, and wrote more than 50 papers for its Transactions between 1898 and 1950. His presidential address was on the physical geography of Dartmoor.

On the moor he was secretary of the Dartmoor Exploration Committee. He drew the Grimspound plan for its first report in 1894, directed round-house excavations up to 1906, and wrote its twelfth report in 1935. He began the annual Dartmoor climate reports in 1906, and his stone rows series ran to ten parts in the Devonshire Association Transactions. He was at the 1909 restoration of Brisworthy stone circle and recorded a survey of it beforehand. He worked alongside Robert Burnard and Sabine Baring-Gould on the committee.

The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall gave him its Bolitho Medal in 1932. Worth's Dartmoor was compiled from his articles by G. M. Spooner and F. S. Russell and reprinted by David and Charles in 1967 (523 pages). Wikipedia dates the first edition to 1953, but the Internet Archive record shows only the 1967 one.

More than 6,000 of his photographic negatives are held at Torquay Natural History Museum, with digitised copies in the Dartmoor Trust archive.

Image: The Devonshire Association.