For all the pride he took in the collective achievements of the Rolling Stones, Charlie Watts had other passions. Family, above all. Jazz, forever. Style, effortlessly. And then there was the love of animals that he shared with his partner and rock for 60 years, his wife Shirley. This is the man who, with his inadvertent flair for saying the unexpected, once remarked that he preferred the company of dogs to humans.

The Watts’ devotion to dogs and horses was a beautiful bedrock of their lives beyond rock ‘n’ roll, from their patronage of charities to their enthusiastic appearances at sporting shows, charity events and beyond. It’s that steadfast vocation that we celebrate in this elegant collection owned by a veritable conservator of the tasteful things in life.

Writing Charlie’s authorised biography, one of the recurring features was the fact that, for all the unwanted adulation he attracted around the globe, he could never wait to get home to the wife and to the life of the country gentleman he cultivated. The couple’s animals were an essential part of it, from the 18 dogs they owned by the early 2000s, to the Arabian horses that Shirley bred so expertly.

They lived with them at Halsdon House, the 16th-century, 600-acre stud farm and mansion that the couple bought in the early 1980s, in the Devon village of Dolton. “I should have been born in 1810”, Charlie once told Esquire, laughing as ever at the absurdity of his world. “I live like a Victorian landowner. I get up, decide what to wear, have breakfast, and stroll about like the lord of the manor. I walk around the stud and look at the horses. We have a horse farm. It’s my wife’s, really – it’s her passion”.

Even in one of their early homes, in Halland in East Sussex, they shared the house with three cats, three collies named Jake, Trim and Jess, a donkey and an 18-year-old racehorse called Energy. “We’ve had horses ever since we were married but I’ve never ridden”, he said. “I do have the most wonderful outfits to go riding in: britches and three pairs of boots. I have some lovely old carriages”. He was the horseman who didn’t ride, just as hilariously as he was the car collector who didn’t drive.

Both of the Watts supported the Forever Hounds Trust, of which Shirley was a patron. As recently as 2020, during Covid and in the year before Charlie’s death, they adopted the five-year-old greyhound Suzie from an Oxford animal sanctuary, after the charity rescued her from the greyhound racing industry.

Charlie’s brother-in-law Roy Rootes smiled as he told me how the universally-adored drummer would walk from the house to the stud farm with dogs in tow, insouciantly munching an apple. Shirley’s horses were named Halsdon Arabians, after their homestead; as she developed a deep psychological understanding of the creatures, she became owner, breeder and an expert in husbandry, developing the farm from a handful of riding mounts to a formidable stable of hundreds of animals.

“He showed me a photograph of an Arab stallion and I fell in love”, Shirley said in a rare interview, with Horse & Hound in 2002. “Charlie bought me my first Arab, which was a part-bred, and it spiralled from there”. In 1995, they paid a reported $740,000 for an Arabian stallion from Australia; in 2009, Charlie visited the Janów Podlaski stud farm to splash $700,000 on a grey Arabian mare called Pinta, the latest in a long line of Arabians purchased with Shirley.

Of course, it was a calling that also afforded fashion-loving Charlie and his wife the chance to dress up, and they were often pictured in their finery at Royal Ascot, International Arabian Horse Shows and so on, both as visitors and breeders. It was Charlie Watts all over, a stylish champion of the welfare of the animals he adored. To quote a sketch in the collection: “Without a horse, a man is nothing”. These were his beasts of burden, and wild horses could drag him away.

View page turning catalogue

Auction Details

Wednesday 22 April 2026, 10.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

Bidding is available in person at our salerooms, online, by telephone or you can leave commission (absentee) bids.

Browse the auction
Sign up to email alerts

Viewing:

• Viewing at Dreweatts London (highlights): 16-17 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5LU
  • Monday 13 April: 10am-4pm
  • Tuesday 14 April: 10am-4pm
  • Wednesday 15 April: 10am-4pm
• Viewing at Dreweatts Newbury (full sale): Donnington Priory, RG14 2JE
  • Friday 17 April: 10am-4pm
  • Sunday 19 April: 10am-3pm
  • Monday 20 April: 10am-4pm
  • Tuesday 21 April: 10am-4pm
  • Wednesday 22 April: 9am-1pm

Further Information:
General enquiries: + 44 (0) 1635 553 553 | pictures@dreweatts.com
Press enquiries: press@dreweatts.com