Alistair Hardaker | Image: Quentin Blake beside A Bridge to the Past (2026), a new mural commissioned for the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration ahead
A Bridge to the Past depicts figures drawn to the New River through the ages, unveiled at Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration ahead of 5 June opening.
Quentin Blake has unveiled a new mural at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration ahead of its public opening on 5 June.
The mural, A Bridge to the Past (2026), depicts a bridge over the New River filled with figures from different eras. The origins of the site date to the early 1600s, when the New River Company completed an engineering project to bring fresh water from Hertfordshire to London.
From 1613, the New River supplied water to London. Although swimming, fishing and bathing were officially prohibited, reports from the 1830s claim up to a thousand people were bathing in the river every summer.
Blake drew inspiration from Isaac Cruikshank’s 1796 engraving of men fishing the New River in formal attire, while other characters are from his imagination.
Blake said: “I was especially pleased to be asked to produce a mural for Quentin Blake Centre’s cafe. You will see that I have drawn a bridge. It does not actually exist but I needed one to act as a bridge to the past. Crossing it are folk in period costume; they are all invented by me, except for the two men fishing who are borrowed from a print made in the 1700s.”
Created in ink, the work has been digitally scaled to sit on the centre’s cafe wall, measuring almost 5 metres by 2 metres. The cafe is situated in the former Boiler House, designed by William Chadwell Mylne in the 1840s.
