Backbarrow Cotton Mill

The painting shows an aspect of the Lake District of which most late eighteenth-century 'Tourists' remained entirely ignorant. The River Leven, shown on the left, flows from Windermere to Greenod on the coast and provided the motive power for the industrialisation of the valley. Originally a cornmill, then a papermill, the complex was turned into a cotton mill at the end of the eighteenth century. The riverside buildings now comprise the Whitewater Hotel.