Professor William Lionel Desmond Ravenhill, M.A., Ph.D.

`Bill' Ravenhill was born in Carmarthen on 30 December 1919 and educated at Carmarthen Grammar School and University College, Aberystwyth, where he read geography. Service as an R.A.F. fighter pilot in Malta, Italy, Yugoslavia and Egypt interrupted his studies and, after completing his degree when the war was over, he went on to take a diploma in education. In 1948 he was appointed to an assistant lectureship at the University College of the South West, later Exeter University, and spent the whole of his career there. His chosen subject was historical cartography, then almost unknown as an academic study at the college. Research into the Celtic origins of settlement in south-west England had preoccupied Ravenhill for some time and in his M.A. thesis he concentrated on Celtic settlement in Devon. Developing his theories still further in his doctoral thesis, he explored how early settlement sites in Cornwall had contributed to modern settlement patterns. Ravenhill was promoted lecturer at Exeter in 1951, senior lecturer in 1962 and Professor of Human Geography in 1969. Two years later he was appointed Reardon Smith Professor of Geography and head of department, which posts he held until his retirement in 1983. Ravenhill regarded the geography department in the fledgling university as very much his own province, to be developed as he wished, and he was determined to secure for it a reputation for sound scholarship. During his twelve years as head of department he recruited some excellent young scholars to his staff, and six of his junior colleagues now hold professorial chairs. Though he lived in Devon, the county of Cornwall was closest to his Celtic heart and when the Institute of Cornish Studies was established jointly by Cornwall County Council and the University of Exeter in 1970 in Redruth, he was its founder chairman and for almost twenty years gave it his support. Ravenhill was also Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies and served a full term as junior, and then senior, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University. He was a member of the Social Science Research Council, the council of the Royal Geographical Society and the British Library Advisory Committee. Ravenhill's analysis of the Domesday Book was a seminal work and his other publications include: Benjamin Donne: A Map of the County of Devon, 1765, 1965; John Norden's Manuscript Maps of Cornwall and its Nine Hundreds, 1972; and in retirement he accepted the co-editorship of the Historical Atlas of South-West England, which reconstructs the geography of the region from the first appearance of man to the present day. He died on 9 October 1995.