Waterton’s Park

Walton Park spread
A camera-shy Waterton with his friend Dr Hobson

We’ve been out on location researching my September article for the ‘Dalesman’ magazine and I thought I’d go for an IMAX-style panorama of Charles Waterton’s nature reserve at Walton Hall, Wakefield, which, as you can see from the 1865 engraving, has now been restored to its former glory, thanks to extensive tree-planting and landscaping by the Waterton Park Golf Club.

cayman
Charles Waterton wrangling a cayman on the River Essequibo, Guyana.

I’ve dropped in contemporary engravings of Waterton’s adventures – a bit of a comic-strip version of the life of a complex character, imagining it as if it was a magic lantern show of his exploits.

Waterton getting a closer view of the Bempton Cliffs seabird colony.

As a graphic designer/illustrator, I’ve gone for layout first, text to follow. The placeholder text is a corrupted version of a text by Cicero, which I feel that Waterton might approve of as he had a habit of dropping Latin quotes into his natural history essays.

A cool-headed Waterton returns an escaped rattlesnake to its cabinet at a scientific meeting at Dr Hobson’s house at Park Square, Leeds.

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