Francis West’s edition of Henry Carington Bowles and Samuel Carvers print of Somerset Place and St Mary-le-Strand. West had acquired the Bowles plates when Robert Wilkinson’s (Bowles and Carver’s successor) stock and plates were auctioned by Sotheby’s on 29th September 1825. West would republished the print in ‘A Collection of Views of Old London and its Environs’.

The print was first produced between 1780 and 1797, when the North Wing (the visible façade, designed by Inigo Jones) was finished. West would have included this print to show readers what Somerset House looked like in the early days of construction. By 1840 King’s College had been built to the east. To the left of the image is the church of St Mary-Le-Strand, the first of the 50 churches built under the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, set up following the Great Fire of London; designed by the renowned architect James Gibbs (1682-1754), construction began in 1714, with the church consecrated in 1723.