Details of Sculptor

Surname

Watson

Alternative Surname

First Name

Henry

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1714

Flourished

Year of Death

1786

Biographical Details

Watson was baptised at Heanor, Derbys on 22 April 1714. He was the elder surviving son of Samuel Watson and his wife Katherine. His brother, Samuel Watson II, is known to have worked with Henry in the 1730s.
He was apprenticed to Edward Poynton of Nottingham in 1729. During the 1730s he produced a number of monuments which are known from surviving drawings. One design in Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock, is for a monument, nine feet in height, with volutes on either side, above which is a segmental pediment. The design is inscribed by Watson ‘June 13. 1736. This is ye 3rd monument I have performed after this design, the last was erected at Didsbury near Manchester in memory of Sir John Bland’s mother, ye others I did for him in memory of his ancestors at Kippax’ (3; GPC). Annotations on another design indicate that Watson also carried out carving in wood for a chimneypiece designed by the architect Giacomo Leoni (8).
Henry Watson’s account book in the Bodleian Library shows that he travelled widely in connection with his work. His assistants, including William Owen, John James and Robert Stanton, operated from London and early in 1737 Watson recorded a journey on horseback from his base in Derbyshire to Nottingham, Oxford and the capital, before travelling to Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire to work for Lord Malton. He then travelled to Warwick to ‘model the busto for Sir Verney Cave’s monument’ (4), a project which involved him with Francis Smith of Warwick (Bodleian MS Eng. Misc fol 383, quoted in Brighton 2001, 72). He received payments from Smith at Oxford in 1738 and 1739, possibly for architectural carving at the Radcliffe Library, where Smith was joint contractor together with William Townesend. Watson also worked for Smith at Wingerworth Hall and Sutton Scarsdale, Derbys, and at Trentham Hall, Staffs (15, 16).
Watson purchased a marble works in Ashford-in-the-Water, Derbys from John Thorpe of Bakewell in 1742. In 1748 there, on the River Wye, he constructed water-powered mills for sawing, grinding and polishing Derbyshire ‘marbles’ from the local mines. The mills were the first of their kind in the country and in 1751 Watson successfully applied for a royal patent for his invention. Around the same date Watson extended his business to premises in Bakewell. A notice advertising the move described his products as ‘marble and other monuments, with their proper embellishments, tables curiously inlaid and decorated with a variety of colours in stone, the produce of this island; vases, obelisks and other curiosities in radix amethysti, &c ornamented either in the material itself or with d’Or Moulu, &c with a variety of other articles’ (quoted in Tomlinson 1996, 12-13).
The Duke of Devonshire, who owned the mines worked by Watson, employed the sculptor to lay a tessellated floor of black and white marbles at Chatsworth (19). Watson also supplied plinths to Matthew Boulton of Birmingham for ormolu ornaments. He evidently maintained London contacts for in 1775 he wrote to Jacob Houblon, the owner of Hallingbury, saying that ‘he hopes Mr. Houblon has seen his mosaic table at Mr. Devall’s, mason, in Little Portland Street, Cavendish Square’ (GPC). This was John Deval II, who was presumably selling Watson’s wares through his London premises.
It seems that the marble mines, despite their innovative nature, failed to bring Watson the rewards he might have expected. In 1802 the antiquarians John Britton and E W Brayley recorded his achievement but added that ‘though a patent was obtained to secure the profits of the invention, the advantages were not commensurate with the expectations that had been formed’ (Britton and Brayley 1802, 3, 484).
Watson died on 24 October 1786 and is buried at Holy Trinity, Ashford-in-the-Water. A tablet in Derbyshire Black marble records that ‘he established the marble-works near this place: and was the first who formed into ornaments The Fluors and other Fossils Of this County.’ Watson’s successor as owner of the Ashford marble works was John Platt of Rotherham. Watson’s nephew, White Watson, worked briefly at the mills.
MGS
Literary References: Britton and Brayley 1802, 3, 484; Glover 1831-3, 2, 260; Thompson 1949, 115; Gunnis 1968, 414; Penny 1977 (1), 9; Tomlinson 1996, passim; Brighton 2001, 49-55
Archival References: GPC
Portraits of the Sculptor: White Watson, silhouette, Derbys RO D859Z/Z85, in Brighton 2001, 54 (repr)