Age burial site at Swarkestone Lowes , which would probably have been recognised as sacred even in the Iron Age .
This Iron Age or prehistoric trackway then entered Derby along the line of the Osmaston Road and ran right through the site of the present city long before anyone lived on its site , for the present city was only founded in around 921 as a Saxon burh or defended settlement , the only previous habitation being the seventh century minster church of St . Alkmund and the small enclave surrounding it .
If one climbs the 172 feet of the cathedral tower , and looks south one can see this ancient trackway quite clearly from the end of Queen Street to well beyond The Spot ; it really is most impressive seen like that .
On the ground , one follows it down Osmaston Road ( which has had some Victorian kinks put in along its course further out to accommodate a private estate and railway installations ) to The Spot , where London Road , only instituted as a turnpike in the early 18th century , joins . Previous to its creation one reached London via
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