Born near King’s Lynn, William Ratcliffe grew up in Manchester where his father worked in the Mills.
After leaving school Ratcliffe attended Manchester School of Art, partly studying under Walter Crane and by 1901 he was working as a wallpaper designer. The family moved to the new Garden City of Letchworth by 1906, perhaps tempted by the social idealism that was a central tenet of this new society and an emphasis on cooperative working.
In 1908, the artist Harold Gilman (1876-1919) and his family moved to Letchworth as a neighbour of the Ratcliffe's and soon after Gilman became a mentor to Ratcliffe. By 1910, Gilman had introduced Ratcliffe to the members of the Fitzroy Street Group, and persuaded him to abandon his career as a pattern designer at the Wallpaper Manufacturers Combine, propelling him to a professional artist.
When the Fitzroy Street Group had been succeeded by the Camden Town Group, Ratcliffe was nominated by Gilman and ended up exhibiting in all three Camden Town exhibitions.
Ratcliffe was constantly on the move, living an itinerant existence and altering his lodgings almost on a yearly basis, periodically staying with family and friends, which makes pinning down the exact location of most of his domestic works difficult.