Description: The Derby Canal at Shelton Lock looking east from the bridge carrying Derby Road and showing the lock itself with the lock keeper's cottage to the right. The latter sports a large board on the front, which would probably have displayed a list of tolls for the different types of traffic carried on the waterway.
Shelton Lock was originally an isolated spot with a wharf on the road from Derby to Chellaston and Swarkestone but with the arrival of the Canal a public house called the Bridge Inn was established and a small hamlet developed that in the absence of anything else, took its name from the Lock. In later years housing development filled the gap between Derby and Chellaston, resulting in Shelton Lock becoming a suburb of Derby in its own right.
In this view it is worth contrasting the two sets of lock gates as the upper gates have been repaired rather crudely with rough hewn tree trunks forming the balance arms, whereas those in the foreground are sawn timber, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Derby Canal Company was well past its most profitable days by the time this picture was taken and such improvised repairs were a necessity. No less than nine children have got into the picture, for the most part smartly dressed, suggesting that the photo was taken on a Sunday after church or chapel.
The Derby Canal connected the Erewash Canal at Sandiacre with Derby and thence continued (via Shelton Lock) to Swarkestone on the Trent & Mersey Canal. There was also a branch from Derby to Little Eaton, from where a tramroad (the Little Eaton Gangway) linked to collieries in the area around Denby. It was completed in 1796 but by the First World War usage had declined considerably (the Little Eaton arm had already fallen into disuse around 1908 and was officially abandoned in 1935) and finally ceased altogether in 1945. After that it became derelict, being described by one observer in the 1960s as a 'linear rubbish tip'. Formal abandonment came in 1964 and the portions within the centre of Derby then disappeared under redevelopment. Elsewhere both the Sandiacre and Swarkestone and arms were largely converted into footpaths and cycleways. At Shelton Lock, the only reminders of the Canal today are the road bridge and the partly buried walls of the lock chamber.
Derby-based postcard publisher F W Scarratt took this photo but it is not known what number he allocated it in his series.