It was during his National Service with the RAF in Germany, that Ingham began to paint, and on his return to England he attended St Martin’s School of Art, and after graduation, the Royal College of Art, where he discovered etching. A Leverhulme travel award allowed him to visit Italy to study Renaissance artists, and to find studio space in the British School in Rome, after which he settled in Cornwall, in a remote cottage on The Lizard without electricity or running water, a cottage he kept and returned to for the rest of his life. In Cornwall etching and the Cornish landscape formed an important part of his work. A chance encounter on the Lizard coastal path led to an invitation and bursary to visit Worpswede, the famous German artists’ colony in a remote farming village, to which he returned regularly, and where he took up collage. In his final six months Ingham recorded his memoirs and artistic testimony. Of his etching he said “There is the argument that by going down many false paths one has enriched one's vocabulary, if only minimally, but positively enriched it. That is one reason why the best of my later etchings are strong. And inimitable, because nobody else has gone up and down those various pathways”.