Description: According to the bracket clock on H Samuel's the jewellers it is just after half past two in the afternoon and things are busy in Derby's Corn Market (or Cornmarket).
The camera is facing north towards the Market Place from the junction with Victoria Street and Albert Street. Horse-drawn cabs of various types are parked to the right and beyond this a Derby Corporation electric tram can be seen heading towards the Market Place - judging from the rear destination blind it will soon negotiate Iron Gate, Queen Street and Duffield Road to reach the system's Kedleston Road terminus. Two boy scouts armed with model lifeboat money boxes are positioned next to the cabs and are no doubt collecting on behalf of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The three children standing to either side of the scouts are almost certainly Winnie, Annie and Alec Scarratt, the photographer's children, a trio well-used to appearing in their father's pictures.
The shops on the right include Lipton's, famous for their tea and here also advertising Gold Medal Butter; Salmon & Gluckstein, 'The Largest and Cheapest Tobacconists in the World'; and the Maypole Dairy Co Ltd, who were competing with Lipton's in the sale of tea and butter. The 'arts and crafts' style building next to the latter is the Old Angel Inn. This was a very long-established hostelry with a history dating back to at least the first half of the 16th century and rebuilt in the form seen here around 1890. It closed in 1962. Next to this is the aforementioned branch of H Samuel and this is then followed by the pedimented former town house of the Dukes of Devonshire, said to date from 1750 but with the ground floor converted into shops in the 19th century.
Most of the buildings on this side of the Corn Market were demolished in 1969 to make way for a new Littlewood's store, but while this name has now passed into retail history, H Samuel were still trading a few doors away on the corner of the Corn Market and Albert Street into the 21st century, complete with the relocated bracket clock visible here.
This photo was numbered 332 in Derby-based postcard producer F W Scarratt's own series.