Turner filled eight sketchbooks on his three-week tour of Scotland in the summer of 1801.  He had begun the largest of these at Fonthill Abbey in 1799 and continued to use it in Scotland to rapidly outline compositions that he embellished on occasion with watercolor.

Linlithgow Palace, the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, built on a promontory bisecting its loch, is a detached page from this sketchbook.