Hamlet Watling

Hamlet Watling (b. Kelsale, Suffolk, 1818, d. Ipswich, 2 April 1908) was a Suffolk-born antiquary whose professional career was as a schoolmaster.

He devoted much of his life to recording church and other antiquities in his native county. His work of recording and illustration was prolific, and although mostly unpublished it contains many unique records. A large amount is held in public and private collections. He conducted excavations, contributed to learned societies, and wrote lengthy weekly columns in the regional press over forty years, c1868-1908.

Family and teaching career

Hamlet was born in 1818 at Kelsale near Saxmundham, Suffolk, the son of Henry Watling, Master of the Endowed School there from 1818 to 1858, and his wife Phyllis (Newson). Four sons followed their father's profession: Walter and Llewellyn were assistant masters as Banbury (Oxon) and Edwin (who married a descendant of the actor William 'Gentleman' Smith) was writing master at Cheltenham 1852-1869. Hamlet began teaching at Aldeburgh, Woodbridge, Cavendish and Ipswich during the 1830s, at Wangford near Southwold c1840-49, and at Dunwich until 1855. His final position was as Master of Earl Stonham Endowed School, 1855-1888. He retired to Ipswich and continued work on his collections until his death in 1908.

The illustrations

Watling's best paintings (of screen panels, wall-paintings, glass windows, etc.) are very impressive, but the great bulk of his surviving work consists of sketches, tracings, and rather weak duplicate versions made for sale in his later life. He compiled 12 volumes of Suffolk heraldry and genealogy in MS. He excavated on Roman sites in Suffolk during the 1860s and 1870s, and made various investigations of the Antonine Itinerary in the county. From c1867 to 1908 he wrote weekly columns for the Suffolk Chronicle and East Anglian Daily Times newspapers, in which he explained the iconography of church paintings to a wide readership and explored the Anglo-Saxon history of Suffolk.

Antiquarian collaborations

He collaborated at different times with the archaeologist Charles Roach Smith, with Henry Syer Cuming (founder of the Cuming Museum collection), the Revd Sparrow Simpson, James Fowler, W. de Grey Burch, H. A. Henfrey, Canon J. J. Raven (Burgh Castle, or Gariannonum), Richard Almack (Long Melford glass), C. E. Searle (later Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge), George E. Fox (Walton Castle) and many other notable antiquaries. Sir Henry A. Howorth much admired his paintings. In around 1898-99 he helped to launch the career of Miss Nina Frances Layard (1853-1935), the pioneering archaeologist of Ipswich who became one of the first lady Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London in c1921-2.

Evaluation

Watling's reputation as an antiquary was partly overtaken by changing fashions in archaeology, and by the fact that a growing middle class found his form of country scholarship and village schoolmaster status increasingly quaint and rustic. Some of his drawings contain undifferentiated reconstruction, and his interpretations (for instance of Dunwich topography) are often questionable. But his archives of drawings form an immense resource for the careful student, and the influence of his forty years' journalistic work on the popular understanding of Suffolk antiquities laid important foundations for the following century. The citation includes biographical and bibliographical materials of value to students since Watling is not included in the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Sources

• S.J. Plunkett, 1997, Hamlet Watling, artist and schoolmaster 1818-1908, Proc Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 39 Part 1, 48-75. Read here.