Return to the Farm, Ronald Lampitt

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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.) 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. 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. 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. A book that many will remember from school, The Map that Came to Life was produced in 1948, with friend and brother-in-law Harry Deverson. This book, which introduces map reading to children via the story of two children going for a walk, was followed some years later by The Open Road – in which the same two children explore the countryside with Uncle George, in his Hillman Minx Convertible Coupe.

The Story of Bread by H. J. Deverson. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books in association with Ranks Hovis McDougall (Puffin Picture Book 119), 1964. At the time that the books were first produced, it was to the commercial artist and not the photographer that a commissioning editor would turn. Work might have been plentiful, but it was very competitive. His book illustrations included work for Summer Pie, Oxford University Press and Ladybird Books, many of them in collaboration with Henry James Deverson (1908-1972). Lampitt's association with Deverson included working on the Mainly for Children series published by the Sunday Times in the early 1960s but also went deeper as Lampitt was married to H.J.'s sister, Mona Deverson (1911-1995), in 1938. The couple had two daughters, Judy and Susan. 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

A weekly magazine, each John Bull cover illustration took several weeks to complete and provided a steady income stream at a time where commercial illustration was more perilous employment than most. However, Lampitt enjoyed other successful relationships with other companies, including for Medici cards, Readers Digest, Look and Learn magazine and the Whitbread calendar. 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. A Ladybird Book of Our Land in the Making: Book 2: Norman Conquest to Present Day’ by Richard Bowood, 1966. His other association with Deverson included working on the Mainly for Children series that was published by the Sunday Times during the early 1960s. Lampitt was a private man: sociable when among a small group of friends and family (the Deversons in particular) but with little interest in seeking entertainment further afield. When engaged on a project he spent long hours in his ‘studio’– a room at the top of the family home, coming down only for meals. He died in 1988, aged 82, after a long fight with Parkinson’s disease.

John Kenney, for example, who illustrated most of the History books for Ladybird, also illustrated Thomas the Tank Engine. Ronald Lampitt, who lived most of his life in Kent and loved the local scenery, painted many beautiful and evocative scenes of country and suburban life for publications such as Illustrated, John Bull, Look and Learn and Readers Digest. There was a shortage of well-made, colourful and robust non-fiction books to meet the demands of the burgeoning education market. Birds and How They Live by Frank Newing & Richard Bowood. Loughborough, Wills & Hepworth (Ladybird Books), 1966. Although born in Worcester, he adopted Kent as his home, living in Sidcup for 50 years, until his death in 1988. The Kent countryside figures prominently in his art and illustration and at weekends he used to go out sketching with his friend, artist Rowland Hilder who was a Kent native. However, he also illustrated railway posters in the 1950s and 60s for destination including Bexhill-on-Sea, Harlech Castle and St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. John Berry had a great gift for portraiture and this can be seen in his powerful portraits of People at Work for Ladybird. It can also be seen at the Imperial War Museum, where his wartime work as a war artist and portrait painter is still on display today.Initially I wanted to find out more about the history behind the books, which itself is a remarkable story. The company that was to become a phenomenon in children’s publishing had an unlikely start as a diverse local print and stationery business in Loughborough, Leicestershire. 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. 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 hedges are mostly of single species – hawthorn waiting for its May blossom – interspersed with trees. These are elms.