Wadsworth had begun his series of drawings of the Black Country with its smoking steel furnaces and factories by March 1919. He regularly passed through the area on the train from Liverpool to London during his wartime naval service. In January 1920 he held a one-man show entitled 'Black Country' at the Leicester Galleries which comprised thirty-seven watercolour and ink drawings depicting the slag heaps and furnaces of Leeds and Staffordshire.
(see Edward Wadsworth 1889-1949, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums Exhibition Catalogue, 1989, p.9).