10a. CHARLES WATERTON AND WALTON HALL - PART ONE

TO READ THE CHARLES WATERTON STORY IN ORDER (RECOMMENDED) CLICK THE APPROPRIATE LINK: PART TWO, PART THREE, PART FOUR.

 

A Wakefield first... 

Recently, I visited what is widely believed to be the world's first nature reserve. I did not, however, have to travel as far as Yellowstone or the Serengeti. I in fact strayed no further than Walton, Wakefield.

Waterton Park was founded in the early nineteenth century by Charles Waterton of Walton Hall. Its foundation did not mean that he erected a sign outside and started charging visitors an entry fee. Rather, he enclosed land he owned with the simple intention of protecting birds and other wildlife that resided there, while at the same time encouraging fresh animal life to flourish.

Charles Waterton is not only a notable figure in Wakefield's history; he is known in far-off parts of the world for his innovative work as a naturalist, conservationist, explorer, writer and taxidermist. If that wasn't sufficient, he also played an important role in an episode from the history of medicine.

As a man, he was known as being kind-hearted, quarrelsome, philanthropic, bad tempered and a true eccentric. For a short time, he was also (somewhat by default) a slave owner who, it seems, thought the slave trade was an abomination.

In other words, he was full of contradictions and had a unique outlook, one that gave rise to a fascinating life story.

Waterton helped inspire Darwin in his travels and studies of nature (Darwin, at one time, visited Waterton Park), while he is also a hero of Sir David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell.

View across the lake to Walton Hall

Waterton's estate was open land for the first twenty years of his residency at Walton Hall. From April to October, the public were invited to fish there and to have various parties, such as weddings, within the grounds. However, poachers started to exploit this relaxed approach, while foxes and rats also preyed on his beloved wildlife. He felt something drastic needed to be done.

Thus, between 1821 and 1826, he built a wall around his two hundred and fifty acres. Eight or nine feet high in most places and around three miles long it was a massive - and expensive - undertaking.

It cost £9,000 at the time, which depending on which source you believe, would be anything from a quarter of a million to three million pounds in modern-day money. Waterton - a teetotaller all his adult life - said he paid for it with all the wine he didn't drink, which hints at his often wry sense of humour.


The wall still exists today. It has suffered significant erosion, but still provides a substantial barrier to much of the land. 

Beyond the trees at the end of this shot lies the remains of the Barnsley Canal, which runs along the border of the park.



With the wall, he created his park for the conservation of the wildlife within, but this was just the start of the project. At a time when all animals were generally viewed as fair game, to be shot at or trapped, Waterton was introducing a number of measures to encourage wildlife to exist and for him to observe it.

He may well have invented the bird nesting box - mature and decayed tree stumps within the estate were hollowed out to provide a natural home.

He built a home for sand martins - a section of wall with a sandbank behind it had around 50 recesses created in it to encourage the nesting of the bird (it's a technique that's still used today).

He had a tall tower constructed in the garden of the hall for starlings to roost in - he would watch them through a telescope from his library window.

He is often credited too with the invention of the bird hide - it is thought there were five of these watchtowers in the park, from which Waterton could make his observations without disturbing the wildlife.

One of these hides survives at Waterton Park today, having been restored by the Rotary Club of Wakefield. Situated at the south-eastern corner of the estate, access is via a gate in the wall within Haw Park.

The roof of the restored hide remains separate from the tower due to safety reasons.

Waterton was behind other schemes to protect the wildlife within the park too. For example, wooden birds were placed in trees across the estate in order to fool poachers. If a gun was ever fired at one of these wooden birds, Waterton or his gamekeepers would be alerted and come running to make sure that nothing more than a dummy bird got shot - or a foolish poacher.

I get the impression that the only thing he hated as much as poachers was rats - brown rats, to be precise. Like many, he saw them as a foreign invader that had come over here to take the jobs of the native black rats. It is said that by the late 1830s he had removed all the brown rats from the park, though this seems a rather bold claim to make.

His attempts at protecting and nurturing wildlife within the park, though, were certainly successful. Over thirty years, he recorded well over a hundred species of birds in Walton Hall Park.

His favourite was the heron, of which there were as many as forty mating pairs at any one time, hence the name of the lake in the park - the Heronry. Birds rare at the time were also identified, such as cormorants, peregrines and merlins, and according to Waterton's notes, there were at one time twenty-four kestrel nests.

Waterton on heron: 'I always hoped that when I got my park wall well finished, I should be able to afford these interesting birds an asylum at Walton Hall. My hopes have been realised.'

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Sir David Attenborough on Waterton: '[He was] one of the first people anywhere to recognise not only that the natural world was of great importance, but that it needed protection as humanity made more and more demands on it.'

Charles Waterton was born on 3rd June 1782 at Walton Hall. His ancestry is too long and full of significant characters from history to be covered in detail here. Suffice to say that if he had been on Who Do You Think You Are, the episode would comfortably have trumped that of Danny Dyer.

Forebears can be traced back to the Norman conquest and include saints, European royal families and a participant at the Battle of Agincourt. Waterton could also claim descent from Sir Thomas More - a clock that had belonged to More once resided at Walton Hall.

The link to More is a significant one. Both More and the Watertons were devout Catholics. More got his head chopped off for his troubles, while the Watertons' decision to stay Catholic after the Reformation meant that the family was somewhat side-tracked from high society.

They seem to have held on to at least some of their land and wealth, though, and Charles was a staunch Catholic all his life. He had strong links with the Vatican, as did his son Edmund, and even had his own priest and holy quarters at Walton Hall, so he could take Mass at home.

His schooldays appear to have been happy on the whole, but he was not one to knuckle down to academic studies. He was always chasing after and catching animals - he was once found scaling one of the school's towers - and by his own account was elected chief 'ratter' at the school.

Fortunately, at Stonyhurst college in Lancashire, his Jesuit teachers appear to have been quite progressive and encouraged his love of the natural world. In return, it seems Charles respected his teachers because when one of the tutors suggested he should abstain from alcohol in order to live a better life, Charles agreed never to touch a drop.

Pretty much as soon as he left school, Waterton began travelling, firstly to Europe. He idled about in Spain for a while, till he had to flee an outbreak of yellow fever (which also went under the more colourful name of the black vomit).

Having avoided the black vomit, he caught pneumonia shortly after. Some sources say it was to recover from this bout of illness that he was sent to the warmer climes of South America. Other sources say he simply offered to take charge of his uncle's estate near Georgetown, in British Guyana. For a young man with a taste for travel who needed to convalesce, it was probably a bit of both.

The plantation in British Guyana was called... Walton Hall. I found the fact that there is an estate in South America with the same name as the estate in Wakefield an enthralling aspect of this tale. However, there is a darker side to the story, as Walton Hall in Guyana was a sugar plantation employing numerous slaves.

 

Charles arrived in 1804 and by 1805 his father had died. Thus, the son inherited both Walton Halls, along with the Guyanan workforce

of forced labour.

There are two ways of looking at this: it seems that the Watertons made a portion of their wealth from a connection with the slave trade, but on the other hand, Charles' involvement did not last long and it is well documented that he was opposed to the slave trade, calling it 'the Devil's invention'.

The Watertons were certainly not alone in making money using slave labour. In the 17th and 18th century, much of the country's fortune was built on it and we can still see the legacy of this heinous trade in the shape of many of the grand houses scattered around the country, such as Harewood House.

Charles Waterton argued against it in print and said it could never be defended. With so many people making so much cash out of it, though, it must have felt like a hopeless battle. Waterton chose to oppose the practice by showing kindness and respect to the slaves on the plantations. Others dedicated their whole lives to its abolition.

Charles sold the plantation in 1812. His main motivation may well have been a lack of interest in it, together with his distaste for slavery, but it may have been partly economic too. Trading in slaves had been abolished in 1807 and the sugar trade was taking a hit due to Britain's wars with France.

He was much more interested in exploring the country and between 1812 (from when he was no longer shackled to the plantation) till 1824, he took four epic journeys into the Guyanan hinterland. Often he walked barefoot, even in the rainy season, and reached as far as Brazil.

His diet during these expeditions was equally extraordinary. He returned with tales of eating monkey, anteater and wasp grubs. Mercifully, the invention of television was still over a hundred years away, otherwise someone may have had the idea of dropping people in the jungle and making them eat disgusting food earlier.

People had to be content with the very popular book he wrote about his travels - 'Waterton's Wanderings in South America'. This travelogue was a best seller and helped to inspire both Alfred Russel Wallace and Charlies Darwin to travel and further their interest in the natural world.

The book described an event in 1820 that became one of the most famous episodes from Waterton's life. He captured a caiman (a creature similar to an alligator) by riding on its back while seven other men helped to pull it ashore via a rope.

This event was depicted in numerous paintings.
 

He also supposedly caught a boa constrictor by punching it on the nose, though a modern observer might respond with NPNT (no picture, no talk) for that one.

With rather more evidence, Waterton is believed to be the first European to write an accurate description of the sloth and its habits (around 1812).

I wonder what animal Europeans used before this to describe a lazy person?

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Charles Waterton's reach across the world is illustrated by the fact that Waterton Lakes in Alberta, Canada - now a national park - was named after him by Thomas Blakiston in 1858. Waterton only ever spent a few days in Canada, but Blakiston evidently thought his contribution to naturalism and exploration were worthy of the honour.

TO READ THE NEXT SECTION ON CHARLES WATERTON, CLICK THIS LINK: PART TWO .

10c. CHARLES WATERTON AND WALTON HALL - PART THREE

TO READ THE CHARLES WATERTON STORY IN ORDER (RECOMMENDED) CLICK THE APPROPRIATE LINK: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART FOUR.

 

Soap Wars & Life Inside the Hall

The village of Walton became known by that name from medieval times. Previously, the Normans knew it as Waton and it is recorded in the Domesday Book as Waleton.

I'm on Shay Lane that runs through this suburb of Wakefield, stopping briefly to explore the landscape of a local dispute I will term 'Soap Wars', in which Charles Waterton played a central role.

The other main protagonist was Edward Simpson, who owned a soap works in Walton. Simpson was the adopted son of William Hodgson. His father had started soap production in Walton around 1818, but only on a small scale. Simpson took over in the early 1830s and enlarged the operation.

Crucially, Hodgson had promised Waterton that they would not produce their own acids. If they did, Waterton was concerned about the local waterways being polluted. However, Hodgson broke his promise (a capitalist manufacturer putting profit over promises - who would have thought it) and when Simpson started to expand production, Waterton's concerns turned to legal fury.

Shay Lane, Walton - the soap works were behind these houses (the houses date from the time and were for a while the homes of some of the workers).

The two sides fought a long battle in the courts, Waterton arguing that the soap works was killing his beloved wildlife and poisoning the village. Simpson no doubt countered that pouring acids and other chemicals into the local water supply was perfectly fine and he had the right to make a living.

The site of Soap House Yard, as the location of the soap works was known at the time. Waterton's wall is in the vicinity of the houses in the distance.

The bitter row was only resolved in the late 1840s when Waterton cut a deal with Simpson. Waterton had some land in the Thornes area and he offered it to Simpson at a knock down price. Simpson was only too happy to go off and infect the good folk of Wakefield Central, rather than Walton, as he was getting a bargain (though it took till 1853 before he finally packed everything up and went). Waterton was happy to cut his losses, if it meant saving his park from further ruin.

This was not the last the Watertons heard of the Simpson family, however. The Simpsons were to play a central role in the history of Walton Hall at a later date, but that element of the story will be revealed later in Part Four.

I leave Soap House Yard and head up the road to the corner of Shay Lane and The Balk. Here you find a blue plaque and no prizes for guessing whom it commemorates (if you said Edward Simpson, wash your mouth out with some Hodgson & Simpson's soap).

I read that, particularly in his later years, Waterton liked to take a stroll into the village from Walton Hall. Dressed in scruffy clothes that were seen as being the garb of a rather eccentric old man, he would chat to the 'ordinary' folk of Walton he met along the way.

Waterton seems to have been well-liked by the locals. Known affectionately as Squire Waterton, though this wasn't an official title of his, he was seen as approachable and was also respected for his philanthropic works, such as giving food from Walton Hall's kitchens to the poor.

It's not hard to imagine Waterton standing on this corner, talking with a villager about how glad he is to see the back of that swine, Simpson. But I only allow a moment to indulge this thought, as I want to allow myself plenty of time to root around at Walton Hall itself.

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I enter Waterton Park and drive down the long winding road, through the golf course that dominates it, till Walton Hall itself rises into view. Perched on its own island, it appears slightly lonely on this intermittently sunny January afternoon, but it is certainly picturesque.

Before I start taking photographs and snooping around, I introduce myself at reception in the modern part of the hotel, which sits opposite. The good news is that I am free to have a look around the hall, including the inside. There is bad news, however, regarding my other intended destinations within the park - the grotto and the grave - both of which it seems will remain nothing but photographs in my mind.

The grotto was part of the pleasure gardens that were towards the Brooklands housing estate part of the park. Picnics were allowed there and Waterton invited working people to enjoy the estate in this area on Sundays.

This was an opportunity for the working classes to enjoy an outside space at a time when there were very few public parks in the area (Clarence Park only came into being in the 1890s - click the link HERE to read about Wakefield's main parks). Alas, the grotto was left to fall down during the 20th century and, according to the manager I spoke to, it has now been completely demolished.

Waterton is buried on the estate and although his grave remains, it is not easy to get to, particularly if you're not partial to taking a golf ball to the back of the head. Understandably, the hotel wants to discourage the possibility of this happening. Neither then will I be seeing the grave today, but I will cover the interesting story of Charles Waterton's death later. First let's look at the history of Walton Hall.

Walton Hall is Grade II listed and was built at the behest of Charles' father around 1767. Before that, there had been something akin to a medieval fort on the site.

The original building had played a role during the Civil War. Roundheads attacked (some say Oliver Cromwell himself was amongst the assailants) and the wife of a Waterton ancestor, who was resident at the mini castle, successfully defended it by firing on the Roundheads with a swivel cannon, injuring at least one of them. Charles was apparently given a cannonball by his father that had been found on the estate and was believed to be from the time of this skirmish.
 
Although the medieval structure was replaced by the less castle-like Walton Hall, as was the fashion in the more peaceful times that fell upon the country in the late 18th century, an important part of it remains.

Known as the Watergate, this stone gateway with a cross on top originally had a bridge leading to it and a door within it. When Cromwell's men attacked, this door was drawn upwards. Bullets lodged in this door and in the book 'Walks About Wakefield' by WS Banks (well known to Wakefield historians), he suggests that Charles Waterton 'put a ring of metal round one or more to preserve the fact in memory.

Sadly, the door is no more, but the ivy-covered Watergate is still an interesting artefact to gaze upon, dating as it does from before the Civil War. As I wander around the grounds, I find plenty else to occupy my thoughts too.

The iron bridge that today links the house with the 'mainland' was built in 1828. By all accounts, it was an innovative structure for the time.

It spans a man-made lake that covers 26 acres. There is apparently another innovative piece of Victorian manufacturing beneath the water. I'm afraid I switch off as soon as anyone tries to explain a piece of engineering to me, but it's to stop the lake silting up too much, or something like that.

Charles Waterton had the lake drained at one time when he was worried it was becoming polluted. According to some stories, it was at this time that he found a cannon dating from, you guessed it, the Civil War.

Next on the checklist for my visit is the two door knockers on the main doors of the hall, which date from Waterton's time. Sporting the faces of two men, one is smiling and one is grimacing.

When visitors enquired as to which one worked, Waterton answered by asking another question: 'Would you be smiling if you were being smashed on the head?' Disappointingly, I found that both knockers worked, so I don't know where that leaves the tale.

There is another blue plaque on the front wall of Walton Hall, in honour of the  house's famous former occupant.

Moving to the rear of the property, I go in search of a sundial that Waterton had commissioned, which has been in situ since 1813. Built by a local mason, it indicates the time in some faraway places, many of which would have been familiar to Charles from his travels.

The sundial is not hard to find, but I'm conscious of the diners in the restaurant watching me, perhaps wondering why this guy is out on his own taking so many photographs of their hotel. I've seen everything of the outside I wanted to anyway, so it's time for me to step inside.

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Charles Darwin, who we know was inspired to travel and study nature partly as a consequence of Waterton's wanderings in South America, once visited Walton Hall. We have a record of this in one of the many letters Darwin wrote. This is from one he wrote to the geologist Charles Lyell in 1845:

'I then visited Mr Waterton at Walton Hall, and was exceedingly amused with my visit, and with the man; he is the strangest mixture of extreme kindness, harshness and bigotry, that ever I saw.'

He goes on to say: 'Despite being over 60 years old, the day before he had apparently chased and caught a leveret [a young hare] in a turnip field.'

Darwin concludes that Walton Hall is 'a fine old House and the Lake swarms with water-fowl.'

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The receptionist in Walton Hall agrees to me exploring the hotel, once I've explained what I'm doing there. This dovetails nicely with Waterton's policy at the time. His house was open to the public for much of the year, so people could view his vast and varied collection of animals.

It was a shame that the animals didn't move very much, but it was a rare chance for people to see creatures that they had never seen before, such as baboons and South American birds. The draw of this is clear when one discovers that some 18,000 people passed through his doors over the years.

I was very happy to read that patients from the West Riding Lunatic Asylum were regular visitors. Readers of my previous post will know that progressive forms of treatment were introduced there during the 19th century. I love it when ostensibly separate pieces of Wakefield's history connect like this.

Read all about the history of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum HERE .

Most of the animal collections lined the fine wooden staircase, so this is where I head first. I see glass cases and metal cages in my mind's eye as I climb the steps. It must have filled Waterton with great pride as he made his way to bed each night, seeing these remnants of his life displayed all the way to his room.

A member of staff at the top of the stairs helpfully points out a room that is believed to be a portion of the Squire's bedroom. The rooms at the top of the hall have been adapted to the needs of the hotel, but my imagination is running wild by the time I'm shown this room and the wooden panelling on the landing that hides what, we don't know.

Possibly it masks another part of his personal chambers, or perhaps something to do with his Catholicism. We know there was a private chapel in the house, in which he took Mass from his personal priest.

Leaving this mystery behind, I enter the library on the ground floor. I’m drawn to the windows and the view of the Watergate and lake.

Waterton bought a telescope so he could observe birds from these windows. He even had a tall tower built near the Watergate to attract roosting starlings.

This kind of behaviour would have been somewhat out of the ordinary in the 19th century, but being out of the ordinary was what he did. This meant he was often described as eccentric. Some of the folk of Walton even suggested he was mad.

It probably didn't take that much to acquire such a reputation in straight-laced Victorian times, but one can see how he would have been seen by some as odd. If he invited you round to Walton Hall for dinner, you might experience a strange night. Sometimes he would pretend to be a dog and bite the legs of guests as they arrived.

For one particular symposium, he brought out a gorilla and plonked it down on the very table that the assembled gathering had just used for their supper. Fortunately, it was very much dead; unfortunately, it had been dead for a while and smelt thus. I'm sure the aroma didn't improve when he proceeded to dissect it in the manner of the 21st century TV programme, 'Inside Nature's Giants'.

If you showed up on the estate either as guest or stranger, he might pretend to be a member of his staff, such as his butler. This little trick might seem tame by today's standards, but I found it reported by more than one source from the time. This gives an indication of how strange it seemed in this era. I mean, a gentleman of such standing pretending to be a servant! This was probably sufficient to make your average Victorian explode. The absurdity of this usurpation of the class system! Madness.

Other supposed eccentricities include his footwear - or lack of it - and his personal 'healthcare'. He would often walk around his estate barefoot, in the manner he did in his youth in the Guyanan rainforest, or wear shoes several sizes too big for him. Offbeat medical practices he was game for include cupping (placing cups on the skin to create suction) and bleeding.

He also regularly drank his own blood. Calling it 'tapping the claret' as he did doesn't really make it sound any less nutty, but he lived to a ripe old age, despite putting himself at the mercy of many exotic diseases on his travels, so it would have been difficult to argue with him. Medicine was still at a very early stage, of course, so ironically, this kind of behaviour was probably seen as one of his least eccentric traits. Most folk still couldn't believe he pretended to be his own butler.

Waterton was also, by all accounts, a fit and agile man. A party trick was his ability to scratch his ear with his big toe (this was much more popular than his gimmick of cutting up gorillas on the dinner table). On the estate, he climbed tall trees to replace nesting birds or simply to sit up there observing the wildlife, sometimes dressed as a scarecrow. He continued to do this into his 80s.

Of course, the eccentricity that had the biggest impact was his care for wildlife and the environment. Protecting animals while everyone else at the time was only interested in eating them was perhaps his greatest gift. A gamekeeper who shot a barn owl was threatened with strangulation by Waterton, while foxes on the estate were trapped and released many miles away, so they couldn't prey on ground-nesting species.

That mixture of fury and compassion is part of what makes him so fascinating. 

TO READ THE NEXT SECTION ON CHARLES WATERTON, CLICK THIS LINK: PART FOUR.