Mill on the Wandle

Watercolour by F Ramsey depicting mills with a mill pond in front and a hay field to the left. Circa 1890.

This 19th century painting shows the River Wandle as an industrialised waterway in a rural setting. One or more mills is shown with a large mill pond next to a field with baled hay.

The river was been used to drive millwheels since at least Anglo-Saxon times. It is only about 11 miles long, but as many as 90 mills have been recorded along its banks, although they would not all have operated at the same time. The industries powered by the mills included the making or processing of flour, paper, snuff, oil, felt, dye, leather, gelatine, print, copper and paper, causing the Wandle to be described in 1805 as "the hardest worked river for its size in the world" (James Malcolm, A Compendium of Modern Husbandry). The identity of the mill depicted is not known, although there is a suggestion that this may have been a copper mill.