Plan of flour mill at the Swan River

This plan shows three floors, with a side elevation of a two-storey threshing building. Unusually for engineering drawings, the plan is illustrated with images of men threshing.

The flour mill depicted here has not been identified, and may have been a proposal for a mill which was never built. There are known to have been flour mills on the Swan River in Manitoba, Canada, and at the Swan River Colony in Perth, Australia.

Bryan Donkin (1768-1855) was an engineer and inventor, and in 1803 established engineering works, at first principally for paper-making machinery, in Bermondsey in London. Fourdrinier Bros. were the original financiers of this enterprise. Bryan Donkin continued to refine and improve techniques. In 1819 he invented a revolution counter to record numbers of items produced. To improve security in printing banknotes etc., he developed the Donkin Pantograph Machine and the Rose Engine. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1836, Bryan Donkin died in 1855 but his firm was then managed by one of his sons. In 1902, the firm merged with Clench & Co. Ltd of Chesterfield, and relocated from Bermondsey to Chesterfield in Derbyshire.