He was apprenticed to the engineer Samuel Clegg and from 1845 served on the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel for three years working on the Great Western Railway in southern England.

Eventually members of the Richmond, Hursthouse, Atkinson and Ronald families, who were related by marriage, all settled near one another in the area.

[5] He formed a close and lifelong friendship with John Gully and continued to paint and sketch in what little spare time he had.

Mary died in Nelson on 29 October 1865 having never fully recovered from the birth of her fifth child, and this event left Richmond 'harassed & broken'.

[6] Richmond died at the house of his daughter, Ann Elizabeth, in Ōtaki, which he was visiting, on 19 January 1898.