thediamond

The Guildhall was opened in July 1890. The clock has not been installed at the time of this photo. Google Street View

Everyone very well dressed. No barefoot urchins about.

The Guildhall Clock was installed in 1891.

Gerry Ward Aha, thanks Gerry! So then 1890 is looking correct for this photo: a) absence of clock; and b) flags in celebration of the opening?

National Library of Ireland on The Commons It's donkeys years since I was in Derry and I'm amazed at the steepness of the street there. It either was or had just stopped raining. Most of the flags are either meaningless or displayed out of their natural environment.

The scales are marked on the 25" OSI Map as "W.M." (Weighing Machine.)

Francis McGolrick... Baker census 1901 and McGoldrick..with the "d" census 1911

According to Donegal Town Website: "The weighing of produce always took place on the Diamond in full view of the public. This was not just a chance arrangement. The same borough charter made it incumbent on the patentee to appoint a weight-master to ensure that all goods between buyer and seller be weighed, charging a halfpenny for every draught under a hundred-weight and a penny a draught for every hundredweight over that with the exception of potatoes which had to be weighed free of charge. There was an iron triangle which was a permanent fixture bedded into the ground on the Diamond and the scales were suspended from this. It was about six feet high. The scales and weights were kept in the yard, or shambles, behind the market hall and wheeled out to the Diamond on Market Day. Sam Glenn became lessee of the markets and Diamond in 1890..."

Sam Glenn in the 1901 Census - possibly one of the guys in the photo?

I was wrong about the shop letters above being the last letters of McGolrick . The proportions of the building wouldn't allow such a long name. It's more likely to be Margaret Craig..widow who has a William Kelly, baker, also living in her 4 windowed bakery

maps.google.ie/maps?q=The+Diamond,+Derry,+United+Kingdom&...

The shop is Austins now and they celebrated 180 years recently - seems it was also Austins then. NOTE - I think you may be correct about the SALE

I think they are electric lights c.1910 design.

From DIA Building: CO. DERRY, DERRY, DIAMOND, AUSTIN'S DEPARTMENT STORE Date: 1906 Rebuilding after fire; 'an imaginative, flamboyant design, with bold modelling which admirably expresses the function of the place'.

Building looks the same today. But that would suggest post 1906 Perhaps the 1906 work was internal ??