The textile historian Clare Rose has suggested that the panel once formed part of a counterpane made by John Brayshaw of Lancaster exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The counterpane was included in the exhibition catalogue in class XIX, and listed as no. 382. It was described as ‘a Counterpane of Mosaic needlework in forty-four compartments, each representing a popular print, twelve feet long by ten feet wide, worked in coloured pieces of cloth without colouring matter, with scroll border of new design’. A corner of the counterpane is reproduced in The Illustrated Exhibitor (London, 1851, p. 391). Four scenes of domestic life worked in rectangles with canted corners are framed by interlocking lines which form links enclosing stylised floral motifs. The counterpane is finished with a broad border of scrolling foliage enclosed within narrow strips of cloth, with a bold foliate rosette in each corner. The scenes depicted in The Illustrated Exhibitor do not include this farmyard scene but differences in the techniques used to create the panel and its border support Rose’s suggestion that the picture may have been taken from a larger textile. The source of the farmyard scene has not been identified.