Stapleton Park, near Pontefract, Leeds

Stapleton Park, just outside Pontefract in the parish of Darrington, was originally the property of Edward Lascelles, who succeeded to the title of Baron Harewood in 1796. It was a location that Grimshaw returned to several times from the late 1870s onwards, at different times of day and year, and using different media. A preliminary sketch of this view, dated 1877, is in the collection of Leeds City Art Gallery. Valerie Eliot (née Fletcher) was born in Headingley, about twenty miles from Pontefract, so it is probable that she would have known Stapleton Park, which by the end of the 1st World War had fall into decay, having passed through a number of different owners.