Early on I knew about Fantasia on Greensleeves, perhaps his most well known work (although Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is lovelier). And because I was brought up listening to traditional folk music, thanks to my late Dad, I knew there was a folk song tune lurking in the middle of it*. And because I was taken to church as a child (thanks to both parents) I knew that he had written some hymn tunes.
Vaughan Williams arranged folk songs for "classical" voices and piano, something Dad certainly did not approve of. Vaughan Williams collected folk songs from people who sang the songs passed down to them, and did this in Norfolk and in Somerset. He wrote an essay about "national music", and the importance of folk song. As well as arrangements of folk song, he used tunes in other compositions (and also as hymn tunes - tunes for Who would true valour see and O little town of Bethlehem are folk tunes).
Vaughan Williams was the son of a Gloucestershire vicar, who died when Ralph was a boy. He moved to Dorking, where he would return to live some years later. He practised music in the Drill Hall there, coincidentally and entirely irrelevantly a building I worked in when I temped for Surrey County Libraries as a cataloguer some years after (but some years ago).
He was musical editor of the English Hymnal, and interestingly did that and wrote church music and hymn tunes while being an agnostic. As editor, he wrote some tunes from scratch for hymns that he wanted to include but which did not have one (Come down O love divine, for example). And one, Down Ampney, is named after his home village in Gloucestershire.
For more about Ralph Vaughan Williams, there is the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, whose site has biographies, information about places associated with him and a list of his works. And this page from the British Library, which also has a link to a page about RVW and the English Hymnal.
* Lovely Joan, in case you are wondering.
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