The original photograph of this late nineteenth century postcard must date back to the late 1880s. What helps date the picture is that the rebuilding of the main front of Smedley's Hydro was put in hand in 1886^[1]. This image was taken after then but an approximate date cannot be gleaned from the postmark on the back. Cards were sold for some years after their intitial publication.

To help work out a date we looked carefully at Lime Grove Walk^[2] which is the street that goes to the right from just below Bridge House (now the Town Hall). The only building on it is a detached villa that stands a little way down from the junction with St. Joseph's Street and New Street. On the corner of Lime Grove Walk and New Street there is a patch of unoccupied ground. The next image shows building work in progress on this land and we therefore decided on the approximate date for the two cards, as we have an approximate date for one of those properties.

References (coloured links are to transcripts and information elsewhere on this web site):

^[1] Peach, Lawrence du Garde (1954) "John Smedley of Matlock and his Hydro", Bemrose Publicity Co.: Derby & London

^[2] By "we", I mean the owner of the card and the webmistress.