Cecil H. Williamson

Cecil Williamson (18 September 1909 – 9 December 1999) was a British screenwriter, editor and film director and influential English Neopagan Warlock. He was the founder of both the Witchcraft Research Center which was a part of MI6's war against Nazi Germany, and the Museum of Witchcraft. He was a friend of both Gerald Gardner, who was the founder of Wicca, and also of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley.

Biography Early life Williamson was born in Paignton, Devon, England. His father was an officer in the Royal Navy and was posted abroad.

Gardner and the Museum In 1946, Williamson met Gerald Gardner in the Atlantis Bookshop in London at a talk which Gardner was giving. The two became friends largely due to their mutual interest in the theory of the pagan witch cult.

In 1947, Williamson tried to open a museum about witchcraft in Stratford-on-Avon, but was forced to change his plans after local opposition. In 1948, Williamson bought a dilapidated windmill at Castletown on the Isle of Man. He turned it into the Folklore Center of Superstition and Witchcraft, and opened it in 1949, along with an adjacent restaurant, the Witches' Kitchen.

Williamson employed Gardner to be the 'resident witch' at the museum, which had been renamed the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act 1735 in 1951. However, Williamson and Gardner's relationship began to fall apart, and Williamson wanted to return to England. So in 1952 he sold the museum to Gardner, and moved all his artefacts to a new site, in Windsor, renaming it the Museum of Witchcraft. Gardner, using his own artefact collection, continued to run the museum on the Isle of Man for the rest of his life.

At Windsor, Williamson's museum remained open for a year, and was quite successful, but was again forced out due to local opposition. In 1954 he therefore moved the museum to Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. Here, the museum was damaged in an arson attack, and so, in 1960, Williamson moved the museum to Boscastle in Cornwall, where it remains to this day.

Final years At midnight on 31 October 1996, Williamson sold the museum to Graham King. Williamson retained some of his artefacts (but none that were on display in the museum) at his home in [Witheridge], a small village near to Tiverton in Devon. After his death in 1999 much of his private collection was acquired by the museum.

Selected filmography Director Soho Conspiracy (1950) Hangman's Wharf (1950) Action Stations (1956)

Editor Up for the Derby (1933) Girls, Please! (1934) The Way of Youth (1934) The Village Squire (1935) Troubled Waters (1936) Blind Man's Bluff (1936) The Minstrel Boy (1937) The Mill on the Floss (1937) Jailbirds (1940) Three Silent Men (1940) Old Mother Riley in Paris (1942)