Details of Sculptor

Surname

Watson

Alternative Surname

First Name

Samuel II

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1715

Flourished

Year of Death

1778

Biographical Details

He was born in June 1715, at Heanor, Derbys, the posthumous son of Samuel Watson I. His father left £100 to his wife, Katherine, who was to raise the child on the interest. During the 1730s he worked with his brother Henry Watson carving chairs for Wingerworth Hall, Derbys (Henry Watson’s Accounts, Watson Notebooks, in Brighton 2001, 71). He is described as a carver in a financial document of June 1741 (White Watson, Collections for a History of Derbyshire, Chatsworth Library, cited by Brighton 2001, 50). As the head of a team of joiners and carpenters employed at Chatsworth in 1756, he received £115 18s 8d for ‘sashes for ye South Front, the Queen of Scots apartment, the Hall, 2 windowes in ye East Front and one in ye great apartment’ (Chatsworth MSS Vouchers L95/7 in Brighton 2001, 55). In the following year, heading the same team at Hardwick Hall, he was paid £121 19 4d for ‘work done to 26 sashes to west front and to taking down the woodwork and making good again’ (ibid).
He was living at Whiteley Woods, Fulwood, near Sheffield, when his son White Watson, was born in 1760 and two years later he moved to Baslow. By then he had established a thriving mill-stone cutting business, which he eventually passed on to another son, Samuel. In 1774 he patented a portable milling machine.
Literary References: Brighton 2001, 55-6
Portraits of the Sculptor: White Watson, silhouette, Derbys RO D589Z/Z85 (repr Brighton 2001, 59)