The card's caption is a little misleading as this isn't a picture of Matlock Bridge; it is an image of Matlock's Parish Church in Old Matlock or Matlock Town. Several postcards of the church from this era describe the church as being in Matlock Bridge.

The old tree on the green, surrounded by a stone wall and seen in a number of nineteenth century engravings of St. Giles', was nearing the end of its life.

Arthur Mee later wrote that "old houses line the narrow cobbled Stoney Way; on a rocky ridge close by is a church ..., though much rebuilt ; above the church by a green is a 17th-century house which has been an inn^[1]". He was referring to the Wheatsheaf Inn, which is on the left of this picture. The small top gate into the churchyard is immediately ahead whilst the main gate is half hidden by the bend at the bottom of the churchyard, opposite the property on the far side of Stoney Way. The stone ball finials of the old pre1908 gateway can just be made out - to the right of the evergreen. If you follow the line of the church wall down the hill you can see a lamp post and beyond that is a kind of dip in the wall, presumably where the wall had collapsed at some stage. In the road, to the right of the lamp, is a pile of rubble.

This shows the ball finials mentioned above
and the pub sign, mentioned below.

The building lower far right was the King's Head public house, occupied by Joseph Marsden^[2]. You will have to look hard, but its sign is projecting over the road at first floor height.

Enlarging the image shows it was taken after the 1897-8 alterations. I (web mistress) believe that this view of the church pre-dates the postal date by several years; the pictures for other cards of the area produced by the same publisher seem to date from 1900 to 1904-5.

View even more about the church by clicking on the images below:

References (coloured hyperlinks are to transcripts elsewhere on this web site):

^[1] Mee, Arthur (ed.) (1937) "Derbyshire: The Peak Country",The King's England Series, Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London.

^[2] Joseph Marsden was shown at the Red Lion in Kelly's Directory 1891 | Kelly's 1895 Directory | Kelly's 1899 Directory | the 1901 census |