Mackintosh toured Dorset in 1895 and made many sketches in Lyme Regis. Elements of the houses Mackintosh drew there were incorporated in entrance bay by the Glasgow School of Art in 1896. Other drawings of Lyme Regis survive in a dismembered sketchbook (collection of Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow) of which this drawing was once part. The mannered shading of this drawing seems to have been used here by Mackintosh in an attempt to create an abstract pattern which overlays the substance of the drawing. He was to develop this practice in later years when he would place several drawings one on top of the other on the same sheet, making a purely abstract design in which all of the original elements would still be discernible.