Tag: Waterton Park

I’ve been reformatting my Waterton’s Park booklet and this detail of three figures is the final illustration. Could this be a photograph of the camera-shy Waterton? Taken around 1860, it may show his Charles Waterton’s son Edmund on the left, one of Waterton’s sisters in law, (so a Miss Edmondstone) and Waterton himself.

But looking at it again, it does look more like Waterton’s friend Dr Hobson, who had a series of photographs taken of Walton Park at the time. There’s the cane, as in the Hobson photograph, the top hat and light-coloured trousers and there’s even a hint of those Victorian whiskers around his face.

Hobson himself says that this back view of Waterton was the nearest that he came to capturing Waterton on camera.

Here’s a story that I was told at a wedding reception in Thorpe on 4 September, 1982:

‘Graham Smithson and David Jones who were fishing at Walton Hall some ten years ago (so about 1972) found a log at the side of the lake. It was hollow and inside they found an old parchment and a diary. Yorkshire Television were doing a feature on Waterton at that time. They sent the material through the post and heard no more of it.’

From my pocket sketch/notebook, 1982

An additional detail which I remember but didn’t add to the note is that the parchment referred to a land transaction. I have a vague idea that the documents might have been hidden in a compartment in an old tin, but I’m not sure on that one.

What they’d found was probably one of Waterton’s bird habitat hollow trees. He had one enormous tree trunk moved to the lakeside and converted it into a combined nesting box and hide. Perhaps Waterton was in the habit of spending time there and for some reason kept a diary and a particular document there.

I’d love to know more. So, if you’ve been clearing out a cupboard at Yorkshire Television and you’ve come across an old notebook . . .