This wheel presumably belongs to a mill, and there is more machinery evidently from the same structure on folio 63 of the sketchbook (
D05680). The low frontal view of the wheel and the mill building behind it, with an outhouse or door on the right and walls overgrown with creeper, has some resemblance to the
Liber Studiorum plate
Pembury Mill (for Turner’s drawing for this see Tate
D08116; Turner Bequest CXVI O). This may be coincidental, but is worth mentioning in view of the origin of another
Liber subject,
Martello Towers, near Bexhill, Sussex, on folio 11 (
D05628). Charles Turner’s plate of
Pembury Mill was published in 1808 so if there is any connection the drawings must be earlier, perhaps from 1806 if, as suggested in the Introduction to the sketchbook, Turner combined his visit that year to William Frederick Wells at Knockholt with touring in Kent and Sussex. Pembury lies on a direct route from there to the coast. Wells was instrumental in the formation of the
Liber project.
