Borrowdale, strewn with tumbled rocks, was once avoided by travellers or provoked near-terror in the few who ventured there. Grimshaw must have visited it between 1863 and 1868, when he was painting the Lake District and collecting photographs of the region. These, and the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Leeds collections, inspired the meticulous realism and detail of this picture of Borrowdale's largest rock.

Coleridge had later described the rock as one of the three 'great stones of the kingdom'. Later, ther emergin science of geology had generated interest in such phenomena. Postcards of the stone published by the Victorian photographer Francis Frith are also on display.