This photograph has been made from an 1885 glass negative of the United Methodist Free Church which stood in the the grounds of Smedley's Hydro, Matlock. It was one of several churches built by John Smedley. Sadly for Smedley, his church did not last as a place of worship and was eventually demolished (the webmistress has a photo of ca. 1955 where at least the spire was still standing but it had gone by the time of a later photograph, taken in 1964).

Some years after John Smedley had died the church was converted to a dynamo house. Du Garde Peach wrote that in 1886 "electric lighting came to Smedley's, and it is interesting to note that the appreciation of scientific inventions which characterised John Smedley still animated his successors^[1]". Benjamin Bryan stated that the engines and dynamos [for a newly enlarged Smedley's in 1901] were "placed in the church erected by Mr. Smedley for the performance of non-sectarian worship according to his own ideas^[2]". Arthur Mee^[3] described it thus: "the embattled building with a tower and a tall spire facing the church [All Saints'] was a chapel where John Smedley used to preach; now it is an engine-house for running his hydro."