A View from Baxter's Library, High Street, School Hill, Lewes, sketched on the day of the ascent of Mr. Green and W.H. Gardner Esq. 29 September 1828. From Lewes Old Prints, p. 12.
 
Henwood’s The Ascent by Balloon of Mr. Green and W.H. Gardiner from Lewes Gasworks, September 29th, 1828 was drawn on the day of the ascent and depicts the unusual sight of a hot air balloon over Cuilfail. Crowds had gathered on School Hill and were charged to see this.
 
The Artist: Thomas Henwood also drew and painted other significant local events including The Visit of William and Adelaide to Lewes, (1830), now in the Town Hall, The Avalanche at Lewes, 1836 and The Procession of the Bonfire Boys November 5th 1853 (both in Anne of Cleves House, Lewes). A lithograph, The Opening of the Railway in Eastbourne, 14th May 1849, drawn and engraved by Henwood, is at the Science Museum, London. It celebrates the extension of the Brighton and South Coast line from Polegate to Eastbourne at the behest of the Earl of Burlington. The picture shows the first steam locomotive entering the new Eastbourne Station and the celebrations of the locals, including toasts, speeches and fireworks.
Henwood was widely used by Sussex gentry and landowners for portraiture of themselves, their pets and their homes. His work is also seen in Rev Thomas Walker Horsfield’s The History, Antiquities and Topography of the County of Sussex (1835). 
 
The Lithographer: Charles Joseph Hullmandel ( 1789 – 1850) was born in London, where he maintained a lithographic establishment on Great Marlborough Street from about 1819 until his death. As a young man, s Hullmandel studied art and spent several years living and working in continental Europe. He learned printmaking and printed many of his own works. In 1818, he set up a printing press in London after a visit to Munich with Rudolph Ackermann, and went on to study chemistry under Michael Faraday for the purpose of improving his printing.During the first half of the 19th century Hullmandel became one of the most important figures in the development of British lithography, and his name appears on the imprints of thousands of lithographic prints. He developed a method for reproducing gradations in tones and for creating the effect of soft colour washes which enabled the printed reproduction of Romantic landscape paintings of the type made popular in England by J. M. W. Turner. Hullmandel's essay The Art of Drawing on Stone (1824) was an important handbook of lithography.