Walls are often built to control, oppress or exclude. Over time, as they crumble, they become visitor attractions, and places to walk. The walls built by Hadrian, by the Ming Dynasty and even by the German Democratic Republic make for fascinating trails.
Less acclaimed is the edifice built 200 years ago round Walton Hall, West Yorkshire, by Charles Waterton (1782-1865). It was here, on a beautiful morning before the summer became so dusty and dry, that I began a walk round a wall.
The air was filled with the scent of May blossom when I strolled up the drive from the scenic old hall, now a hotel and spa, to the estate’s edge.
Turning left, I took the towpath beside the Barnsley Canal, which was derelict here and filled with boggy plants. A tunnel of trees reached across from each bank.
Beyond the far bank stood Waterton’s wall, nine feet high and built of pale local sandstone. There are plenty of aristocrats who enclosed their parkland with impressive walls – and Waterton did so with messianic zeal, and for unusual reasons.
Nurturing a keen sense of how much of the natural world was being destroyed by the industrial revolution, he vowed to protect his estate’s wildlife by encircling it with a three-mile wall, designed to repel foxes and poachers.
Over four years in the 1820s, he spent every spare guinea on stone and masons to build it, at a cost of £10,000 (nearly £1 million today). The eccentric, teetotal Waterton claimed the wall was ‘paid for with the wine I do not drink’.
The wall was a success: after its completion, he recorded 123 species of birds in his parkland and 5,000 wildfowl on his lake. Herons, kestrels, hedgehogs and weasels set up residence in his park.
Today, the wall is collapsing in many places but a charity, Friends of Waterton’s Wall, is raising funds and repairing it, a Sisyphean (or at least a painting-the-Forth-Bridge) task.
Beside the canal, the wall had clearly seen better days but Waterton’s precious birds were still thriving. Song thrushes and chaffinches sang from almost every bough; blackcaps from every hedge.
Crossing the canal, I joined the Trans Pennine Trail, following the western side of the wall into rolling countryside, where skylarks sang over fields of barley. In places, the westerly winds had worried cavities in the stone, and I could peep into the parkland. Apart from birdsong, the only sound was a mower on the golf course that takes up much of the estate today.
I moved on into a wood, where the heronry established during Waterton’s day endured; ivy clung to the wall, both holding it up and tearing it down.
I turned into Anglers Country Park, created beside a newer reservoir, and saw my first swift of the year (hurray!) and my first topless jogger of the season (not so delightful). Both would prosper in the long heatwave to come.
The reservoir glittered blue, while blackbirds and garden warblers sang in birch thickets. I turned back downhill, looking down on the green circle of Walton Hall’s walled estate.
Crossing a little stream, and through a gap in the wall, I entered a marvellous slice of tangled old woods beside the water, scented with bluebells and greater stitchwort.
The path passed near to Waterton’s hidden grave, sited between two now-vanished oaks. As I wiggled round the lake, accompanied by the blather of greylag geese, the hall came into view again, set within an amphitheatre of green and blue. Swallows dipped low over the water, hunting insects.
I imagine Waterton, who lived to the age of 82, fiercely loving nature and climbing trees into his dotage, would be satisfied to see his sanctuary still filled with wildlife today.
I parked at the Waterton Park Hotel, WF2 6PW, for this pleasant three-mile circular walk, with the allure of refreshments in the restaurant at the finish.
