My father, Richard Harland, who has died aged 93, was a prolific researcher, an active campaigner, a historian and a pacifist. He loved open spaces, water, boundaries and local history.
Richard was born at Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and named after his uncle, who had been killed in 1918 in France. He went to Bootham school, York, and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied modern history and jurisprudence. In 1941, he registered as a conscientious objector, but was rejected for military service on health grounds. In 1942, he passed his solicitor's finals while volunteering at "poor man's lawyer" centres, precursors of the Citizens Advice Bureaux.
In 1945, he worked in Germany, resettling refugees in bomb-damaged towns before joining the British Control Commission in Berlin; he caught the last bus out before the Soviet blockade.
He served in local government, first in Hemel Hempstead, then from 1949 until 1954 for Lincolnshire county council, and was the council's man on the spot in Mablethorpe dealing with the aftermath of the devastating tidal surge of 1953.
Richard met Elma Brown on a walking holiday in 1953. They married the following year, moved to Chelmsford, Essex, and helped launch the town's branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Richard's promotion was blocked in several organisations because of his activities in the peace movement.
In 1959, he joined the Craven Water Board (now part of Yorkshire Water) in Skipton. There he was the board's solicitor and founded a professional society to raise water industry standards nationally. He and Elma became Quakers in 1961. With Arthur Raistrick, a friend who shared his interests, Richard helped found Friends of the Craven Museum and Upper Wharfedale Field Society. He also registered common land in Yorkshire for the Ramblers.
In 1973, Richard was appointed solicitor to the new Yorkshire Water Authority, taking responsibility for, among other things, flood prevention and land drainage. It seemed to him the best job in Yorkshire, until there was the threat of privatisation. He retired in 1985.
Elma and he helped form the Grassington and District Peace Group in 1981. In retirement, Richard continued his work for peace, and supported Elma in making links beyond the iron curtain. He served on the national executives of the Open Spaces Society and the Ramblers' Association, and wrote the first draft of the "freedom to roam" that became the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
In 1995, he won a case at a public inquiry to maintain Mastiles Lane, a green lane across the Yorkshire Dales, as a non-vehicular byway. He gave talks on local history and, aged 90, began collecting second-hand tools for Workaid. He was pleased to have finished his history The Living Stones of Skipton Quaker Meeting (1993), written for the tercenternay of the meeting house. He gave his final advice at Airton Meeting: that it is best to do things as simply as possible.
He is survived by Elma and their four children, Ian, Philip, Ruth and me.