Walton Hall, West Yorkshire
Coordinates: 53°38′31″N 1°27′04″W / 53.642°N 1.451°W
Walton Hall is a stately home in the county of West Yorkshire, England, near Wakefield. It was built in the Palladian style in 1767 on an island within a 26-acre (11 ha) lake, on the site of a former moated medieval hall. It was the ancestral home of the naturalist and traveller Charles Waterton, who made Walton Hall into the world's first wildfowl and nature reserve. Waterton's son, Edmund, sold the estate.
The Waterton Collection is now in Wakefield Museum.
Walton Hall is now part of the Waterton Park Hotel. In the 1940s and again in the early 1950s and early 1960s the Hall was a maternity home.
Walton Hall with his residence at Cawthorne, was home to the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Chieftain, Ailric, the ancestor of Charles Waterton, who is mentioned in the Domesday Book and was the Kings Thane for South Yorkshire. The day the Normans first came to Yorkshire, Ailric was at Walton Hall and was alerted by a man on horseback that they were coming in force. He hastily amassed his retainers and on horseback they ambushed the mounted Norman knights of Ilbert de Laci, who were moving on the road from Tanshelf to Wakefield. The better armoured and armed knights of Ilbert de Laci were able to drive off this attack. For 2–3 years Ailric was able to maintain a guerrilla war out of his estates in the west of South Yorkshire, until Ilbert was forced to come to an accommodation with him, whereby Ailric would communicate with the local people and Ilbert would grant him back, many of his former estates, including Walton Hall.
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