Making hay when the sun don't shine: the Rev. William Richardson, science and society in early nineteenth-century Ireland

The Reverend William Richardson is known to historians as one of the founders of the Irish Yeomanry in 1796. It is less well known that he was a prolific and important writer on agricultural improvement and geology, who included Humphry Davy and Sir Joseph Banks amongst his correspondents. Although Richardson's ideas on improvement were eventually discredited, in their contemporary context they provide a rare insight into scientific interactions between Ireland and Britain. This article also argues that Richardson's input into Belfast's intellectual life can be contextualised in terms of a struggle between radical and moderate groups to dominate the town's civic identity in the decade after Union.