London from the roof of the Albion Mills

Barker’s panorama shows London’s riverscape towards the end of the 18th century. This is how the city would have looked when William Wordsworth wrote ‘Lines Written Upon Westminster Bridge’ in 1802. In the sonnet’s opening lines he declares:
'Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.'

At this time only three bridges spanned the Thames in the centre of town. Blackfriars dominates the middle of the image. On the far left the humpbacked old Westminster Bridge can just be made out. On the far right is London Bridge and beyond it a forest of ships’ masts. London Bridge was the most westerly navigable point for ships. Goods were offloaded and carried further upstream on sailing barges and other smaller vessels.

Albion Mills was built in 1786 by Samuel Wyatt and was a famous rotary steam-powered flour mill. It was London’s first great factory, producing six thousand bushels of flour a week and the cheap flour drove the millers of Lambeth out of business by closing less efficient businesses. When the Mills were destroyed by fire in March 1791 arsonists were suspected. These prints therefore comprise an important record of the mills at the time.