‘Harewood House, in Yorkshire, the Seat of Edwin Lascelles Esq.’ in W. Watts, The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry: in a Collection of the most Interesting & Picturesque Views, engraved by W. Watts, from Drawings by the most Eminent Artists. Chelsea: W. Watts, 1779–86. Acton.b.25.155, plate 7

The present Harewood House was erected in 1759 for Edwin Lascelles on the site of a medieval manor house. Between 1772 and 1780 the parkland was laid out to designs by Brown who is attributed with the main drive and a substantial lake, taking three years to construct. In the final stages of Brown’s work at Harewood ground to the north was lowered and plantations extended.

The new park landscape was depicted in Watts’s Seats of the Nobility and Gentry. However, the enduring fame of Brown ensured that many accounts and illustrations of his work at Harewood followed. In 1801, the Beauties of England and Wales recounted that ‘The gardens and pleasure-grounds, laid out by Browne [sic], correspond with the elegance of the mansion. The grounds before the south front was originally a rough hill; but is sloped down with great judgment and art, and forms a beautiful declivity, which gives to that side of the house an additional grandeur’ (XVI, 716–17). Nearly a century after Brown had left Harewood, a Guide to Harrogate still noted that the house ‘stands in a well-wooded park of near 2,000 acres in extent, of which about 150 acres are laid out in gardens and pleasure grounds, by the celebrated Brown, at a cost of £16,000.’