Exploring Waterton Park, east of Wakefield for the NWR May walk.
Now a beautiful rural landscape popular with walkers, Waterton Park estate once belonged to the pioneering naturalist Charles Waterton, whose father built the Palladian mansion Walton Hall on an island in Waterton Lake. Today, the Hall is a luxury hotel and much of the estate is a golf course, but the woodland areas are popular with walkers.
200 years ago, the world’s first nature reserve was created here, when Charles Waterton built a three-mile-long, nine-feet-high stone wall around his estate, intended to keep out poachers, foxes, badgers, and deer, so that small mammals and birds were safe from predators. Within his reserve, he built a watch tower and used a hollow tree to observe wildlife – possibly the country’s first nature hides.
Sections of the wall are now crumbling and in need of urgent repair, so a group of enthusiastic locals have pledged to do all they can to preserve it.
These “Friends of Waterton’s Wall” have the full support of Sir David Attenborough, who’s made a promotional video to endorse their fundraising efforts. He describes Waterton as one of his personal heroes, recognizing him as a pioneering conservationist, whose vision of protecting birds and wildlife was remarkable at a time when conservation was almost unheard of.
While walking past a stretch of the wall, we were thrilled to meet a crew from BBC Look North interviewing members of the Friends’ group at a recently repaired section.
The Friends members showed us the new information board explaining the history and purpose of the wall to the public and we wish them well in their endeavours to preserve it.
The nearby village of Walton has a long tradition of post box toppers for every topical occasion and they’ve excelled themselves here!
Note the fox, deer, badger and poacher frustratedly peering over Waterton’s wall at the waterfowl safe within it. The figure astride the “crocodile” is Charles Waterton himself, who once used his waistcoat to subdue a captured Caiman in Guyana – and lived to tell the tale!
Words and pictures kindly provided by Ruth Rothwell.