Return to the Farm, Ronald Lampitt

Product Information

As the supply of commercial print work dried up and with paper also in short supply, it was discovered that a whole book could be produced from one large, carefully laid out sheet of paper. thatch, stonework, porticos and a random juxtaposition and size realationship, but at its heart, it is not. The same concept could have been used featuring a really exciting range of modern archetecture. Now that would have been something. But who knows perhaps in a Yet there are more changes still to come. This landscape has not yet seen the combine harvester: the hedges are maintained and not yet ripped out. We can see some newly pleached with trimmings being burned. The gates have not yet been widened. The elms will be lost to Dutch Elm Disease in less than a decade introduced, like many of the first tractors, from North America. What to Look for Inside a Church by P. J. Hunt. Loughborough, Wills & Hepworth (Ladybird Books), 1972. Pudney(1909-1977) was a prolific British journalist and writer (despite leaving school at 16), memorable for his short stories, his wartime poem For Johnny(1941) and his BAFTA-winning documentary ‘Elizabeth is Queen’ (1953). In the aforementioned article, he proposes his vision:

Rowland Hilder's lifelong passion for landscapes began when, as a poor student, he cycled into Kent and discovered the Shoreham Valley, where he sketched the same barn drawn by visionary painter Samuel Palmer in the 1820s (Image: Archant) Some of the artists, such as C F Tunnicliffe, S R Badmin and John Leigh-Pemberton are well known in the art world. However, when it comes to many of the other artists, despite the enormous impact they may have had on so many childhoods, it has been an area largely left to the hobbyist and the blogger, such as myself, to collate and record their story. A Ladybird Book of Our Land in the Making: Book 1: Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest by Richard Bowood. Loughborough, Wills & Hepworth (Ladybird Books), 1966. it.Ronald Lampitt was one of the 30 illustrators involved in the creation of the book. He, like the others, was a humble ‘commercial illustrator’, as theyDuring the early days of the Second World War, necessity became the mother of invention for the company, then called Wills & Hepworth. But for now this mixed farm has modernised but not changed completely. While horses no longer speed the plough they are still present, an integral part of farming life. This means that the farmer would have grown oats for their feed and maintained stables. His friend and brother-in-law Harry Deverson was a well-connected Fleet Street journalist and helped Lampitt to find work with various publications including 'Illustrated' and the popular weekly magazine 'John Bull'. [1] Together they also produced two books: 'The Map that Came to Life' (1948) and 'The Open Road' (1962), written to introduce children to map-reading and the pleasures of exploring the countryside. Lampitt was particularly skilled at producing illustrations of large topographical areas and his first commission for Wills & Hepworth (Ladybird Books) was 'Understanding Maps'. He went on to illustrate a total of 9 Ladybird books until the sale of Wills & Hepworth, in 1972. Pulling out a couple of battered old copies, I showed them to my baby son. Instantly I noticed that his engagement with the imagery of these vintage Ladybirds was on a different level.

For the next 20 years, Keen remained at the heart of the editorial process and it was his instinctive ability to recruit the best artists for his purposes and then to match artist to commission that underpinned Ladybird’s success over these years. This is a winter landscape with leafless trees, a grey sky and fields bare of crops. The farmstead sits in the centre and, from Lampitt’s depiction, we can trace the farm’s origins and several phases in its development. This is, almost certainly, a product of the process of parliamentary enclosure, perhaps somewhere in the Kentish Weald in the 18th century. (Enclosure was the process by which common land and strip farming in open fields was brought into private ownership and the landless – who relied on access to commons to graze animals – were forced from the land.) This new venture proved to be a commercial success and the plan to abandon book publication after the war was eventually dropped.

BRITISH COMICS REPRINTS & REFERENCE

The poster depicts a village in the Dales, accompanied by lines from A E Housman's poem, 'The Merry Guide'. A Ladybird Book of Our Land in the Making: Book 2: Norman Conquest to Present Day’ by Richard Bowood, 1966. This prototype served its purpose; the directors were finally convinced and in 1953 British Birds and their Nests, written by naturalist Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald and illustrated by Allen Seaby, was published. It was a great and immediate hit and set the company upon the path to extraordinary success. Ronald Lampitt was born in Worcester in 1906. He was a self-taught commercial artist and illustrator, who produced artworks for John Bull magazine, The Sunday Times, Reader's Digest and other publications. He worked on children's books in collaboration with his brother-in-law, Henry Deverson and illustrated nine Ladybird books and the magazine Look and Learn. The Story of Bread by H. J. Deverson. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books in association with Ranks Hovis McDougall (Puffin Picture Book 119), 1964.

Ronald George Lampitt (16th March 1906 - 1988) was an English artist and illustrator, perhaps best known today for his work for Ladybird Books, for railway posters and for the children's books 'The Map that Came to Life' and 'The Open Road'. A Ladybird Book of Our Land in the Making: Book 1: Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest’ by Richard Bowood, 1966. Born in March 1906, Ronald was the oldest of the three boys born to Roland Edward Lampitt and Florence (nee Pope). The family were comfortably off but, when young Ronald was offered a place to study at The Slade, his father refused to let him go, advising him to “get a proper job”. What histories can we read in a landscape? How have people and communities been shaped by the places they occupy? Dr Adam Chapman, of the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community, and Editor of the Victoria County History (VCH) looks at what we can learn about how the post-war farming landscape shows its pasts and provided hints at its futures. Animals and How They Live by Frank Newing & Richard Bowood. Loughborough, Wills & Hepworth (Ladybird Books), 1965.Mid-20th century British illustratorRonald Lampitthad a predilection for maps. It probably was no coincidence that he got to draw, in the Illustrated Magazine of 17 February 1951, the proposal of John Sleigh Pudney for an ideal city. That’s certainly how it was for me. I was born in 1964, the same year that Ladybird books started to publish its most popular fairy-tale books and the ‘Peter and Jane’ reading series books, so their imagery coloured my world. Keen’s attempts to convince the directors initially fell on deaf ears so, undeterred, he decided to produce a prototype, non-fiction Ladybird book, aimed at the older child. His choice of topic was one that interested him personally – British birds – and he wrote the text himself. His mother-in-law and wife, both talented amateur artists, were asked to produce the illustrations. In this age of planning it is surely time that some innocent traditionalist thrust his way forward to offer mankind the ideal city. Whose ideal?goes up the snarl from the idealists. Ideal for what?chorus the realists. Ideal against whom?demand the tacticians. Why a city?moan the simple-lifers. Allow me for a moment to toy with dreams, taking a holiday from the magic of the materialists. The ideal city which I shall venture to plan must be controversial: for it is myself of whom I am thinking rather than of humanity in general. I have the vice, before my ink is dry, of all planners. I have a sneaking notion already that what is good for me must be good for the rest of mankind.”

These last books were published at a time of great change for Ladybird. Douglas Keen was looking to retire and, together with his co-directors, the decision was made to sell the company to a large publishing conglomerate. Perhaps somewhere in this upheaval lies the reason why Lampitt illustrated nothing more for Ladybird. Yet we can see evidence of the medieval and later landscape of open fields, shared by the tenants of the manor: there’s a hump in the field to the left of the farm. This is surely the headland, where ploughs once turned between two fields, now ploughed out. For years information on this has been very fragmented. Serious records of children’s illustrators of the 20th century have tended to overlook the illustrators of Ladybird books. I’m sure that my idea of beauty was shaped by evaluating Cinderella’s ball dresses, Jane felt like my friend and Peter looked like a tidier version of my own big brother. Frank Hampson created the character of Dan Dare and was at the forefront of The Eagle magazine for many years.How can we tell? The boundaries in this landscape are straight. A surveyor’s pen drew them and his chains and lines made them a physical reality. The hedges are mostly of single species – hawthorn waiting for its May blossom – interspersed with trees. These are elms. The hedges are mostly of single species – hawthorn waiting for its May blossom – interspersed with trees. These are elms. Although born in the West Country, Lampitt lived most of his life in Sidcup and loved the Kent countryside. He was a good friend of Roland and Edith Hilder, who had previously illustrated ‘Wild Flowers’ for Ladybird, and together they formed a sketching club, going out for long walks in the countryside around Shoreham, armed with sketch pads. United Kingdom Ronald Lampitt was born in Worcester in 1906. He painted in oil and watercolour but is best known for his work as an illustrator or children’s books and railway posters. The many magazines he contributed to included Zoo, Passing Show, Illustrated, Modern Wonder, John Bull, Look and Learn and Treasure. In the 1930s he produced a number of very popular travel posters for railway companies including the Great Western Railway and Southern Railway. As a book illustrator he worked for the Oxford University Press and most memorably for Ladybird Books, for whom he illustrated many publications. In association with his brother-in-law, Henry James Deverson, he produced the Mainly for Children series, published by the Sunday Times in the early 1960s. He is known for his extensive aerial views of landscapes and townscapes, which are the result of his war service in RAF Intelligence where he was employed making drawings of bombing targets based on aerial photographs.