Tag: Charles Waterton

Waterton’s Watchtower

I’D ALWAYS assumed that the stone watchtowers that Charles Waterton(1793-1865) built around Walton Park were primarily birdwatching hides where Waterton, accustomed to life in the tropics, could take shelter on walks around his nature reserve but when I read an account of a visitor to the Park in 1835, I realised that these were intended as sentry boxes. It was all very well for Waterton to enclose his sanctuary with a long high wall but in order to ensure that his pheasants and wildfowl wouldn’t be disturbed by gangs of poachers from the local towns, he had to organise night patrols.

I believe there were four towers originally of which I’ve seen three. Two of them were in ruins and have now disappeared without a trace but the third has been restored. They are positioned in strategic points such as where the stream flows out of the Park under the wall and at the diagonally opposite corner with a view down the slope to the Lake.

On an evening visit to a neighbouring wood Waterton once surprised a poacher. In the ensuing fight Waterton, who was on his own, without the support of his trusty gamekeeper, John Ogden, was wrestled to the ground. Fortunately he fought off his assailant by grabbing him by the cravat and choking him until he ceased his attack and fled.

Again for this illustration I’ve worked from reference, this time from two photographs kindly supplied by John Whitaker, curator at Wakefield Museum. I hadn’t realised that the towers originally had a conical turret roof. When the watchtower was restored a few years ago the roof was omitted, I guess for structural reasons, but what a difference it made when I reconstructed the tower with the roof in place. It changed from looking like a military installation to looking like something out of a fairy tale, the sort of enchanted little tower that a traveller would find on a walk through the woods.

No doubt one or two gangs of poachers were in for a big surprise on the night that they they went down to the woods and first came across the tower and the band of guardians that presumably hid inside it.

Waterton’s Wall

CHARLES WATERTON completed his wall around Walton Park in 1821. It had taken five years to build and cost £9,000. Refusing to go into debt to complete it, Waterton, who as a teetotal Yorkshire squire was something of a rarity, quipped that he’d paid for it with the money he hadn’t spent on claret.

It seems a simple concept today but it had never occurred to anyone before to enclose an area with the sole purpose of providing a sanctuary for wildlife. Enclose an area to hunt wildlife, yes, but not to preserve it for the purposes of enjoying it for its own sake and studying its habits.

He also pioneered the concept of a country park by providing an area for picnics and outdoor concerts in a clearing in a small wood near the farm buildings known as the Grotto. Keeping some areas strictly for the birds and allowing open access to the public in others ensured that visitors didn’t unduly disturb the birds and animals in the perfect patch of unspoilt countryside (a rare commodity in the industrial districts of mid-Victorian West Yorkshire) that they’d come to enjoy.

Waterton been inspired by his experience of the wilderness of what is now Guyanna to recreate a pristine version of as many English natural habitats as he could fit into his park; lake, swamp, hedgerow and woodland. He regretted that he didn’t have an arm of the sea available to complete his selection.

He picked up ideas on his travels in Europe, notably the use of ivy to cover ruins which he’d seen in Italy in a park where pheasants could coexist with the throng of townsfolk taking a stroll because the birds had instant access to dense cover.

I’ve enjoyed working on this illustration even though I decided not to go on location to draw it, which is usually my preference. I’d taken a photograph of one of the few complete and uneroded sections of the wall in the summer, so I worked from that. As you can imagine drawing the sandstone blocks of the wall had a therapeutic effect on me. Unlike when I’m writing, I find that I can listen to the radio as I do this kind of step by step drawing, alternating from classical music on Radio 3 and news and documentaries on Radio 4. Bliss.

I don’t as yet know whether the final use for this illustration will be in black and white or colour so I took a high resolution scan before I started adding the watercolour. The illustration has to sit easily with nineteenth century engravings of the Park.

The line drawing was in Noodlers black ink, using an ArtPen with an extra fine nib.

Frost at Fairburn

IT’S A PERFECT crisply frosty morning and we get out early enough to enjoy the sparkle of the low morning sun on the hoar frost at Fairburn Ings RSPB reserve. I’m pleased to see that they’ve tried building a Sand Martin wall (on the far right in my panorama above) on the south-facing side of the lagoon in front of the Pickup Hide as this is a form of nest box which was invented by local naturalist Charles Waterton, who set up a sand martin wall in the kitchen garden at Walton Hall over 150 years ago.

The original wall was dug out by a JCB, presumably to the recycle the stone, about 30 years ago by the farmer (who used to tell me that he was a Waterton fan!). Brian Edgington, who was writing his Waterton biography at the time happened to turn up on the day of the demolition and had to watch helplessly as this cornerstone of conservation was destroyed.

But look, you can build one again, it’s easy. Waterton would have approved and I think that he’d concede that the RSPB have sited it more appropriately than his, which was abandoned by the martins after a few years. A few Starlings were nesting in it when I photographed it (probably the only photographic record we have of it) in the 1970s.

It’s such a pleasure to walk around the reserve which has been transformed by the frost and snow.

It’s good to see dozens of Tree Sparrows at the bird-feeding stations.

They’re joined by other species, notably Goldfinches, which, thanks to the simple fence with slots cut into it, I’m able to attempt to photograph with my little Olympus Tough, a camera that was never designed for this kind of subject.

It might be a bit limited but that wasn’t going to stop me having a go at capturing the aggressive behaviour of these Coots on one of the frozen ponds. The body language of the pair on the right was quite enough to send the single bird scurrying away. Despite the magical backdrop, you couldn’t describe Coot choreography as Swan Lake on Ice.

By the way, this photograph had to be stitched together from two taken in quick succession. With a delay of what seems like a whole second, but probably isn’t, the Tough can’t instantly catch fast-paced action of Coots.

We make our way across what I remember a decade or two as grey open colliery spoil heap, later an open space with thousands of newly planted ‘whips’ of trees. It’s now grown into mixed woodland, although one of the volunteer wardens tells us that it isn’t yet mature enough to attract Nuthatches, although they do see Treecreepers.

We continue on this path to take a look at the main lake, which isn’t frozen over like the smaller pools. I sketch a greyish/brownish duck. It has the shape of a Goldeneye but I decide to check it out by making a field sketch (colour added later).

Checking it out with the bird guide at home the key feature that identifies this bird as a female rather than a juvenile or a drake in eclipse, is the white ring around its neck. But I also noted that it has light-coloured eyes, and the book points out that the juvenile has darker eyes.

That was the limit of my drawing on this cold day. We decided not to take a flask of coffee to drink in the hide (which with no door and no window flaps is a rather chilly one today) and instead we headed back for a Fair Trade coffee from the machine in the Visitor Centre with a view of the bird feeders.

Barbara put together a do-it-yourself bird-feeder log, stuffing the larger holes drilled in it with fat-ball mix and the smaller ones with peanuts.

Here’s one last photograph; the view from the side window of the Bob Dickens hide by the main lake.

Link: RSPB Fairburn Ings