Boundary wall of Waterton Park, Walton, Wakefield

Boundary wall and gate piers built between 1821 and 1826 for Charles Waterton, constructed in sandstone.

The approximately 105 hectare parkland of Walton Hall, now Waterton Park Hotel, is enclosed by a stone boundary wall measuring between nine and sixteen feet (2.7m to 4.8m) high, though varying in height in some places. The wall is constructed of stones of varying sizes, making phased construction clear in places. It is mostly intact in its circumference and remains readable as a boundary wall encircling the approximately lozenge-shaped park, though the southern section on the eastern side is more deteriorated and elsewhere there are patches of damage by trees and partial collapses. The west side of the wall is bounded by the disused Barnsley Canal, now partly infilled.

The principal entrance to the park is on the west side of the boundary wall. The drive crosses over the late-18th-century Walton Hall Canal Bridge (Grade II) and passes through a slightly inset section of wall containing a wide gateway flanked by tall square gate piers of squared blocks with moulded stone caps (the left-hand gate pier is presently covered in ivy). On the north side of the gateway a short section running behind the golf club building outside the wall has been reduced in height and an archway incorporated to allow access to a pedestrian footbridge over the former canal. The high wall to the north, continuing to the north-west corner, is of coursed, squared sandstone blocks with stone coping. It contains a pedestrian gateway with a shaped stone sill, monolithic stone jambs and lintel, with a later iron railing gate. On the south side of the gateway the high wall is angled down to incorporate the outer rubblestone wall of a lodge (now demolished) with a tall round-headed window overlooking the canal, before returning a short distance towards the canal and continuing along the eastern edge of the former canal as far as Haw Park Bridge (Grade II) to the south. The wall then has a short dogleg before again running parallel to the canal and the road (Sike Lane) which passes over the bridge. In this corner is a wide gateway with two tall square gate piers of squared blocks with stone pyramidal caps and modern wooden double gates. Between the right-hand gate pier and the left-hand corner of a line of single-storey stone buildings the short stretch of boundary wall is ramped higher and is constructed of rubblestone and narrow, roughly-shaped stones, with shaped stone coping. The boundary wall then continues from the right-hand corner of the rear of the buildings. It is covered in ivy; where it is visible towards the south-west corner the wall is constructed of rendered rubble stone.

At the southern end of the park the boundary wall turns away from the line of the canal in a south-easterly direction through the north end of Haw Park (woodland), turning on its east side in a north-easterly direction along the edge of fields. This section of the boundary wall is mainly constructed of roughly-coursed rubblestone, which is partly rendered; where the render has worn off the rubblestone is deeply weathered in places. Coping is of triangular-shaped stones and in places the wall is stepped. There is a blocked pedestrian doorway in the wall to the right of Haw Park which may be secondary as it is less well formed.

The eastern side of the boundary wall contains an entrance for a former track across the fields to Nostell Priory around 4km to the east (shown on 1:10560 Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1849–51). It has tall square gate piers of squared blocks with pyramidal caps. The wall to the south of the gateway is more extensively collapsed though parts remain where diagonal buttresses of stone blocks have been built against the inside of the wall. To the north of the gateway the tall wall is of squared sandstone blocks, with some shaped coping; this section particularly shows several phases of building in the courses of stonework which differ in the size and shape of the stone blocks. There are a number of diagonal buttresses of stone blocks built against the outside of the wall.

At the north corner of the boundary wall is a large square pier. The wall returns down the hillside in a south-west direction to join with the north-west corner. It is constructed of coursed, squared blocks and towards the right-hand end is a round-arched archway enabling the Drain Beck to exit the park.