Description: Looking north-east along Dairyhouse Road with Cambridge Street crossing from left to right in the middle distance. The Cambridge Hotel (constructed in 1892) is to the left with the United Methodist Chapel (dating from 1901) on the right. A Derby Corporation electric tramcar is just leaving the passing loop at this point and possibly the woman and girl about to cross Cambridge Street have just alighted from it. The tram is No 50, the last of a batch of three built by Brush of Loughborough in 1911, and thus relatively new when this photo was taken.
The tramway along Dairyhouse Road was opened from Osmaston Road to Peartree in 1904 and extended westwards to the Cavendish at Normanton the following year, thus creating a circular route to and from the centre of Derby via either London, Osmaston or Normanton Roads. It also provided a particularly useful and direct link between the rapidly developed New Normanton area (the scene shown here had been fields up to 1890) and the Midland Railway station. Derby's trams were replaced by trolleybuses between 1930 and 1934, the Normanton Road-Cavendish-Peartree route being the final one to be converted.
This is a winter scene and the creeper festooning the front of the Hotel has died back and is barely visible. Slightly more obvious is the enamelled metal sign advising 'You May Telephone From Here', a common feature at many hostelries at this date.
Today, this view is substantially unchanged apart from public transport now being catered for by motor buses, plus the fact that all the cast iron railings seen here disappeared during World War Two in aid of the war effort. The Cambridge Hotel was renamed The Windmill in 1987 but closed around 2000 and was converted to other uses, while the United Methodist Chapel shut in 1972 but subsequently became St Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church.
This photo was taken by Derby-based postcard publisher F W Scarratt and was allocated the number 601 in his series. To see the published (and slightly cropped) version of this image go to DRBY001360.