1930-2020 Simon Watts -- Click here to enter our memorial site

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A celebration of his life is planned for March 7, 4-6 the Club Room, Exeter Mill. Join us!

Simon Watts, fine woodworker, boat-builder and writer died peacefully at his Exeter, New Hampshire home with his daughter at his side and his family near-by on January 21, six days after celebrating his 90^th birthday.

Richard, Rebecca, Alison, Lexie, Ellie, Anna, Rose and Simon

 Born in London, England, Jan 15, 1930, Simon grew up during World War II, the son of Punch Cartoonist Arthur Watts and the writer and social worker Marjorie Watts, and the grandson of P.E.N founder Marjorie Dawson-Scott. Simon’s father died in a plane crash when he was five, leaving his mother to raise him and his two siblings.

Simon spent summers at the family home in Cornwall, sailing on the estuary with his sister Marjorie-Ann and scavenging pieces from downed RAF fighter planes. At the age of 16 he contracted polio which severely restricted movement in his left arm and leg – but never slowed him down.

In 1953, Simon moved to North America, famously hitchhiking across the United States after spending several days under Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge.  He took his engineering degree from Cambridge University to work building roads and bridges deep in British Colombia, hundreds of miles from the nearest town. More than a year later he then moved  back east to work in Montreal for an aluminum engineering firm.

A sailor from an early age he sailed the lakes and rivers of Quebec with his good friends, David Firth and Rose Glickman. He also spent time volunteering with the Quaker Friends on a mission in Mexico and re-discovering his love of buildings and architecture. He started at the MIT School of Architecture in 1958. It was in Boston that he met Heidi Walter, a Harvard teacher at a Quaker potluck and they decided her porch would be a good place to keep his boat. They married a year later in a quiet ceremony on April Fool’s day. Eight months later, their first child, Richard, was born – “premature" Heidi said.

Wedding day, April 1 1959

Half-way through architecture school, Simon remembered that making things was what he always loved and launched his career as a furniture maker, using the woodshop so conveniently located at MIT.

The young couple bought a house on Melrose Street in Boston’s theater district and Simon set about building furniture and their next house in the basement.  A few years later they trucked the half-built home to Newfane, Vermont. Soon after came two more children, Alison and Rebecca. In summers he taught sailing in Castine, Maine.

Simon continued his work as a furniture builder, teaching math part-time at nearby Windham College. Their next move was to Putney, the first of six different houses in that small Vermont town, as Simon built and designed new houses and posted his cabinet-maker shingle on a Kimbal Hill haybarn. Inspired by artists like Charles Rennie MacKintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright, his pieces showcased the strength and hidden language of woods like mahogany, teak, oak and maple. He featured the wood’s natural lines and elegance and would often be seen stroking the wood of a table or chair when he sat down to a cup of tea or to write.

On their first trip to Nova Scotia, while they were visiting with Heidi’s sister, Simon sailed out with his arm in a cast, and returned after a long day on the sea to tell Heidi he had found their house, a small wood-shingled house with no running water or plumbing on an island several miles off the coast, once home to a fishing family. Within a year, the house on Middle Island became part of the family and provided more than 50 years of summer adventures and good friendships.

Kathleen, Colin Hirtle & Garnet with Heidi, Simon, Alison and Richard celebrating with a "little something."

In the 1990s Simon started writing regularly about woodworking and hand tools for magazines like American Woodworker, Popular Woodworking, Woodwork, Fine Woodworking, Wooden Boat, Woodworkers Journal and many others.   In 1983, Taunton Press published his first book, A Houseful of Furniture. Other books would follow like Sailing for Everyone and the Art of Arthur Watts.

His writing and love of travel took him often to England, Portugal, Mexico, Norway and Canada where he visited old friends and made new ones.  

With Alison

Heidi and Simon separated in 1973 and Simon moved from New England to San Francisco, settling at 720 Bay Street in San Francisco, where he could see Alcatraz Island across the bay. A view that led him to new waters to sail, sharing a Folk Boat with his good friend Paul Mueller and contesting the challenging tides, oil tankers and currents of Bay sailing. Simon became west coast editor for American Woodworker, continuing to write about wood, hand tools and boats – all things wood. He launched a new career building wooden boats in small classes across the country, spending a week in residence at boat schools and museums – from San Francisco’s Hyde Street Pier to a class in land-locked Vermillion, South Dakota. Known for his dry humor and clever turn of phrase he enjoyed seeing the boats emerge from the students – and the first test run – once in swimming pool to avoid the ice.

With horse because it can't all be boats!

To sharpen his boatbuilding skills he apprenticed for several years for a variety of skilled Canadian boatbuilders, and started building wooden boats in the family’s Middle Island workshop. For a period of time he co-directed the Arques Wooden Boat School, in Sausalito, Calif. Always a craftsperson in the tradition of Edward Barnslee, he preferred working by hand and building boats with long historical pedigrees, such as the Bush Island Fishing vessel, the Norwegian Pram and a replica of an International 14 he had sailed in Cornwall as a child. Several of his boats have been displayed in museums like the Halifax Museum and the Lunenburg Museum.

In another turn of his career, he organized a series of boat-building manuals, based on boats he had built and work-shopped and was delighted with seeing his plans followed by boatbuilders across the world. Most recently his boat designs have been turned into model kits, starting with the best-selling Norwegian Pram.

Alice Sloan sailing the Pram off of Middle Island

 In recent years he moved to an apartment in Exeter, NH, where he was lovingly cared for by his children, grandchildren and his many neighbors and friends.  He could be seen scooting around town on his daily visits for soup at the Green Bean, coffee at D2 Java or to pick up the latest special order at the book store and library. His family deeply thanks the many good people who supported his daily adventures across town. 

Simon is survived by his sister Marjorie-Ann Watts, his former wife, Heidi Kathleen Watts, his brother Julyan Watts, his son Richard, daughters Alison and Rebecca Watts and their spouses Allison Cleary, Adrian Fieldhouse and Eric Nichols and seven grandchildren; Kristina Rivers, Anna Watts, Patrick Nichols, Rose Watts, Lexie Nichols, Elanor Fieldhouse, Madeline Fieldhouse and two great grandchildren; Eleanor and Indira Rivers.

For more on Simon’s life and work see this site

Or his website of boats and furniture. 

Many of you may have your own memories of Simon please feel free to share those here or on Facebook here

Donations can be made to the Exeter Public Library (4 Chestnut St., Exeter, NH 03833) in his name.