White Watson - Surviving Works

Surviving Works

His collections were broken up and sold on his death. However, examples of his marble and limestone work survive in the tomb of the Foljambe family at Bakewell Church, a plaque at St George's Chapel, Windsor for George III from 1789 and the known remaining geological tablets. His tablets of 'A Section of a Mountain in Derbyshire' and 'A Section of the curious curvilinear Strata at Ecton Hill' are now in Derby Museum, as are a number of others. Other surviving tablets, including contemporaneous copies of the ones in Derby Museum, are in the British Museum (Natural History), London, Oxford University Museum, Chatsworth House, Manchester Museum and Leicester Museum. Watson's manuscript catalogue of the Chatsworth Mineral Collection is still kept at Chatsworth House, together with many of the specimens he provided for the collection. Despite years of neglect, the collection itself, including many of Watson's own specimens, has been largely restored at Chatsworth House after over 10 years of painstaking restoration by the Russell Society. A Catalogue of the External Characters of Fossils, by White Watson F.L.S. Bakewell, Derbyshire. 1798, found during this restoration work, is also held by Chatsworth House. His diaries from 1780–1831 are in the Bagshawe Collection in Sheffield City Library, together with his fossil catalogues. Other private papers, notes and sketches, together with much material for but extra to published volumes, are held in Sheffield Library and Derby Library, and an album of preparatory silhouettes from 1806 is also in Derby Library.