When I travelled around the country drawing and writing my Richard Bell’s Britain natural history sketchbook, I found that pages including manmade objects in a natural landscape – such as an abandoned forestry lorry on a track through a pine plantation – often worked best.
The Persil factory had made an impression on me as I passed through Warrington on the train.
It appeared as a thumbnail sketch on one of the maps in Britain and when my editor Robert MacDonald suggested a sequel, focussing on industrial Britain, I returned to draw it.
I did more drawings closer to home, one series documenting the last coal barges to operate between British Oak, near Crigglestone, and Thornhill Power Station.
The Persil Factory made it onto the cover of the dummy of the proposed book, but the project never got off the ground, however I did sell the original pen and watercolour at one of my one-man shows a few years later. I was quite honoured that my French teacher from Grammar School days, Miss Deacon bought it.
This mock-up of the cover is a hand-coloured photocopy, as this was long before the days when I would have a scanner in my studio.