Painter and draughtsman, born in Nottingham, son of a milkman, who at 15 left a school that “I think had the highest Borstal rate in Britain” to earn £1 a week training as a lace curtain draughtsman. He did this for six years, becoming highly skilled, then spent periods in Brussels as a pavement artist, returned to Nottingham and painted landscapes while working on the lace, also painting seascapes and coastal scenes in Devon. In Nottingham his work moved towards Social Realism and he attended life classes at the Society of Artists. For a time Waplington divided his days between his own work and lace draughtsmanship while developing an exhibiting career. The lace discipline, he claimed, helped with design in his pictures, which depicted the lace factory, miners and housing estates with shrewdness and gusto.