This photograph of Welshpool is rather dark and very blurred in places, but it may well have been taken as early as 1870.
It can be hard to date old photographs accurately, but it is known that the small black and white half-timbered shop and house which you can just see on the left hand edge of the picture was knocked down in 1876.
This building stood on the corner of Broad Street and Berriew Street, and it was later replaced by the North and South Wales Bank on the same site.

The stone column with the three gas lamps attached was built at the top of Broad Street in 1835.
It is not known what the special occasion was when this parade through Welshpool took place, but there are a lot of top hats being worn. Many of the people on the right of the photograph are very blurred, and both of these clues suggest a date of around 1870 when long exposures were still needed when taking pictures. This meant that people who moved (often children !) came out blurred in Victorian photographs.

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