A NATURAL ECCENTRIC
Did you know the world’s first nature reserve was created in 1826 near Wakefield? Debbie Rolls profiles its founder, the extraordinary Charles Waterton
Meet 19th-century naturalist Charles Waterton, who turned his family estate into the world’s first nature reserve.
Throughout his life, the most likely place to find Charles Waterton (1782–1865) was up a tree. A committed nature lover, he turned his family home – Walton Hall, near Wakefield – into a sanctuary for wildlife, establishing the world’s first nature reserve. In his broad Yorkshire accent, dressed in rags, he would happily talk about the
123 species of birds living there. As the naturalist and author Gerald Durrell said of him, “we have always needed eccentrics to point the way”.
As a child, Waterton wandered woods, watching birds and foxes. At school he craved fields, not books. The Jesuits at Stonyhurst College found a way to justify his passions by making him the school ratand fox-catcher.
In 1802 he travelled to Spain, encountering flamingos and vultures, but also impressed by flocks of goldfinches. He wondered if the relative lack of wildlife in England was due to industrialisation and hunting. His time in Spain was cut short by yellow fever, a Swedish sea captain enabling his escape from a quarantined Malaga, where 10,000 had already died. Waterton’s travels also exposed him to malaria and pneumonia. He dealt with spells of ill health by self-administered purging and bloodletting, and had little regard for physical comfort, sleeping in the attic without a bed, the window open so owls and bats could share his roost.
He voyaged to British Guiana in
1804 to manage his uncle’s sugar plantations, which were worked by slave labour. In 1812 – his uncle and father having died – he was at last able to leave the family estate and venture into the interior to explore. His journeys in Guiana and Brazil are related in his book Wanderings in
South America (1825) which contains the first accurate description of a sloth. This unfortunate creature – and other preserved animals he brought home – can be seen in Wakefield Museum.
Waterton developed a form of field taxidermy. He was sometimes accompanied by John Edmonstone, a slave whom he instructed in preserving animals. Later, as a freed man living in Edinburgh, Edmonstone taught taxidermy to Charles Darwin, enabling the naturalist to transport finches from the Galapagos.
A HAVEN FOR NATURE
Back in Yorkshire, Waterton built a wall around his estate, to keep nature in and guns out. Completed in 1826, at over three miles long and 16ft high, it was an expensive undertaking. Hedgehogs were particularly welcome, safe from those who regarded them as vermin, accusing them of sucking milk from recumbent cows. He paid locals sixpence for each hedgehog collected.
He had been married for just a year when his wife Anne died in childbirth in 1830. Afterwards, Anne’s two sisters lived at the hall, helping manage the household and bring up Charles’ son. That allowed Charles freedom to wander the grounds: planting trees, putting up bird boxes and piling stones for weasels. The ‘squire’ was often mistaken for a tramp by strangers.
Ahead of his time, Waterton understood the importance of nature for mental health. Visitors from West Yorkshire Pauper Lunatic Asylum were encouraged to walk in the grounds and use his telescope for birdwatching.
In 1840 he led a successful campaign to stop the enclosure of common land at nearby Heath village. When a soap-works opened adjoining his property in 1839 he fought to have it closed, recognising the threat to waterfowl. His legal campaigns did not close the factory, but in 1853 it was moved. David Attenborough has described his work as “a demonstration of how the natural world could be protected in the face of a rising tide of industrial pollution.”
In his 80s Waterton was still climbing trees and walking barefoot around Walton Park. Just short of his 83rd birthday, he tripped over a root and received injuries from which he never recovered.
Listen to Sir David Attenborough’s account of Charles Waterton’s life on
David Attenborough’s Life Stories, available on the BBC Sounds app and at bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b011vjj0
“Gerald Durrell said of him, ‘we have always needed eccentrics to point the way’”