This is a well-known image of Greenwich at the time of its Easter Fair, which filled the streets of the town until the parish authorities abolished it in 1857 as deleterious to good order and public morals.

Many sorts of people and occupations can be spotted among the crowd shown, from decorous strolling, dancing and children's games, to 'tumbling' on the hill below the Observatory, an urchin escaping up a tree with a Greenwich Pensioner waving a stick at him below, and sailors dallying with ladies of uncertain status on the grass. These are apparently Naval men from their dress and the cudgels they carry and one, by the tree left has a monkey on his shoulder. The large crowd on the left may have assembled around some sort of contest or fight. One of the best descriptions of Greenwich Fair, though rather later, is in Dickens's 'Uncommercial Traveller'.