Ian Robert Penicuick HESLOP was born in Bengal, 14/06/1904 to Septimus Heslop and Elizabeth Penicuick Dick.
His father was a consulting mining engineer working for the New Beerbohm Coal Company, originally from Durham.
Ian grew up in Bristol where he studied at Clifton College, later at Cambridge where he earned a degree in classics about 1926. He eventually joined the Colonial Service in Nigeria in 1929, eventually progressing to become a District Commissioner.
Whilst in Nigeria he met Eileen Agnes Huxford and they married there in 1943. They decided to return to the UK in order to raise a family and they came to Burnham about 1945. Belfield, Poplar Road, Burnham would be Heslop’s family home for the remainder of his life.
Ian’s own father had been a keen naturalist and lepidopterist who encouraged his interest in butterflies during a bout of mumps at the age of seven. This became a life long obsession for Ian, so much so that he became a renowned expert in British butterflies and especially the Purple Emperor (Apatura iris). Heslop’s attitude to butterfly collecting has been described as “turning the gentle pursuit of butterflies into an extreme country sport”. He collected his first example of Leptidea sinapis (wood white) on the tracks at a railway station, only narrowly escaping being hit by an oncoming express train. In 1968, aged sixty-four, he waded and swam into a flooded Woodwalton Fen to collect examples of Lycaena dispar batavus (large copper). He was said to be “one of the last great collectors of British butterflies, and certainly the greatest of the purple emperor” (Quotes from Matthew Oates – writer on lepidoptery).
Not only was he an experienced lepidopterist, conservationist and naturalist, doing particularly important work on the pygmy hippopotamus whilst in Nigeria. He was also an excellent shot with handgun and rifle. There were contests between Oxford and Cambridge Universities which he helped to win between 1923 and 1926. There are two trophies provided by him, one of which is still contested.
Heslop is thought to have taught Latin at St Dunstan’s School as well as at other schools in the south west. He retired in 1969.
Heslop died 02/06/1970 age 65.
Full his full biography see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Heslop