[9][2] In 1911, Cedric Lee approached Richards to work on an annular biplane which he had acquired half-finished from British inventor J.G.A.

[10] Together, Lee and Richards finished the aeroplane, fitting a 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome Omega engine in the front.

Between 1911 and the outbreak of war in August 1914, Richards was engaged in original research and experimental aviation, almost entirely relating to this machine and other variations, known variously as the Kitchen annular biplane and the Lee-Richards annular biplane and referred to as the flying doughnut due to its unusual circular wing shape.

[12][13] A non-flying replica later appeared in the 1965 film Those magnificent men in their flying machines and is now on display at the Newark Air Museum.

[12] Model tests of a new design at the National Physics Laboratory gave promising results, confirming that an annular monoplane would be aerodynamically stable and have benign stalling characteristics.

[6] From 1916 to 1917 he produced their first in-house aircraft designs, achieving his greatest success with the W.B.III, a navalised version of the Sopwith Pup which Beardmore were manufacturing under license.

[2][14] In 1924, Richards began working for the Science Museum, London as a curator and lecturer, specialising in aeronautics and later typewriters.

[17][6] Papers by Cedric Lee and Richards relating to their work on the Lee-Richards Annular Monoplane between 1911 and 1914 are held by the National Aerospace Library at the Royal Aeronautical Society.