William Edwin Clarke started his shop in Ripley in 1912. He was born in Eastwood in 1889, the son of three generations of tailors. Just before his birth, the family had lived in Victoria Street, the same street as D. H. Lawrence’s family, and it is very likely that the families knew each other.

William Edwin married Lettice Ada Lawrence, D.H. Lawrence’s sister, in 1913 and served in the Royal Marines Light Infantry in the First World War. Lawrence visited the Clarkes fairly often, and they helped him take the lease of Mountain Cottage in Middleton in 1918. Whilst there he caught the flu, and was treated by Ripley doctor Dr Mullan-Feroze.

William Edwin and Ada had two sons: John Lawrence, born in 1915 and William Herbert (Bert), born in 1923. John (known as Jack) died in a POW camp in 1942 aged 27 and it was Bert who carried on the family business, passing it on to his two children, David and Deborah.

The shop expanded and celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2013, and at that time occupied 10,000 square feet spread over two stories and employed 36 members of staff, but closed in 2020 after the first wave of Covid, leaving only its recently opened sister shop in Belper.