Engraved by R. Wallis for Picturesque Views in England and Wales, Part XIX, No.2 (Rawlinson No.282).

Numerous small pencil sketches of architectural and industrial details at Dudley occur in the 'Birmingham and Coventry' sketchbook, T.B.CCXL, ff.39-50. The 'Kenilworth' sketchbook, T.B.CCXXXVIII (No.442) was used on the same trip and includes several larger views at Dudley, including one of the town and castle from roughly the same viewpoint as in this watercolour, but with a rural foreground of wooded banks.

The subject is one of the most striking of Turner's records of the industrial scene - compare the views of Shields (No.241) and Leeds (No.186). Rawlinson calls it 'one of the most deeply poetical of Turner's works. The contrast between the past and the present is so profoundly felt, so impressively rendered. The quiet, pathetic beauty of the once dominant, but now ruined feudal castle is strikingly brought out by the forges and the busy life of the nineteenth century below'. Charles Heath lent the watercolour to the 1833 exhibition, so presumably it was being engraved at that time.