Presumably painted for Edward Lascelles, Baron Harewood and later first Earl of Harewood (1740-1820) or his son Edward Lascelles, later Viscount Lascelles (1766-1814), in about 1798, the date of Turner's four finished watercolours of Harewood House (see No. 27). Gage's unqualified dating to 1798 (1967, p. 148), though likely, is not documented by any published account. They still normally hang each side of the fireplace in the library at Harewood House (see repr. in Gage, pl.32). There is a watercolour closely related to No.31 in the British Museum (T.B.CXCVII-L).

These direct uncompromising views of a fashionable picturesque feature on the Harewood estate, though owing something to Wilson, are much less sophisticated in composition and handling than Turner's other early oil paintings, presumably, as Gage suggests, because of their function and destination.