A History of Warton Parish: The Cover
Original pencil sketch 
Four plates were used
What kind of cover do you put on a reprint of a local history book written 300 years ago?
There is – sadly – no known portrait of the author, John Lucas. No parish maps or pastoral scenes of the right age survive. The new edition needed a completely new image to make it stand out on the bookshelf.
I handed the conundrum straight to my older daughter, Ellie Denwood, a trained illustrator.
We thought St Oswald’s church might feature on the front…and we were both struck by this description from the History:
“The Walls of this Church are strong and all over roughcast with good Lime and very small blue Pebbles…fetch’d from the Sea Shore. And this…looks very white, so that the Church may be seen Eastward at the Distance of many Miles, though it stands at the foot of a high Hill.”
Armed with that quote, Ellie went to work. She referred to photos, made some preliminary sketches and then built up the image for the cover using four layers of lino print, gently heating the lino tiles before cutting into them. She chose a palette of four colours, all hand-mixed: a dark Prussian blue, a lighter, almost air-force blue, and a cobalt for foliage. St Oswald’s church tower looms white against the contrasting blues. Although Ellie worked from photographs, the image is not a literal representation of a real view and the imagined houses merely convey the idea of a village clustered around the church. The result is simple and striking.
It is tricky choosing one image to represent the whole Parish. Warton’s church was undoubtedly the hub of the community in the early eighteenth century. But just in case any of the old townships feel snubbed we’ve added a list of villages mentioned in the history at the foot of the front cover…and there are plenty of other illustrations inside!
Prints of the cover design available on request.
