When you next go into the Waterton Arms,
pull up a chair and raise your glass to the remarkable Waterton family and here’s why...

Edmund Waterton (1830-1887), like his father Charles (1782-1865), was educated at the Jesuit Stonyhurst College but there the similarity between the two ends. Edmund was a flamboyant character, well liked at the school and fond of playing elaborate tricks on people. He had an obstinate stammer and developed from a little angel with golden curls to a dark-haired giant who was known as Long Tom by his friends. Although able, he showed no interest in academic studies but became an obsessive collector of objects ‘The interior of his desk was a strange knick knackery of beads, little altar crosses and piles of old rare religious books.’  He was a collector for the rest of his life.

On leaving school he headed to Rome where he became the Pope’s Privy Chamberlain in 1857. At about this time Edmund was given the management of the family estate in Yorkshire, his proud boast being that he had collected nearly 1,000 volumes of interesting books, several objects of antiquity and some carved ivories.