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 (née Newson).
are impressive, but the great bulk of his surviving work consists of sketches, tracings and rather weak duplicate versions made for sale in later life.
Watling's antiquarian reputation was somewhat overtaken by changing fashions in archaeology, and as a growing middle class found his form of country scholarship and village-schoolmaster status increasingly quaint and rustic.
Nonetheless, his archives of drawings form a vast resource for careful students and the influence of his 40 years of specialist journalism contributed to popular understanding of Suffolk antiquities for the following century.
The source cited includes biographical and bibliographical material of value, as Watling is omitted from the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.