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Cecil Williamson (18 September 1909 – 9 December 1999) was a British screenwriter, editor and film director and influential English Neopaganism 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.
In 1921, whilst at the boarding school Malvern College, Williamson was bullied, but he claimed got help from a woman who lived on the school grounds, who was also a witch. She showed him how to cast a spell on the bully, who soon after broke his leg in a skiing accident and stopped bullying Cecil.
During Summer holidays, Williamson often went to visit Dinard in France with his grandmother and her friend Mona Mackenzie. Mackenzie was a spirit medium, and she taught Williamson about divination.
In 1933, he married Gwen Wilcox, a make-up artist, and niece of film director Herbert Wilcox.
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.
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