Country Images Magazine North January 2018 | Page 48

King Street, Derby 1914
Swarkestone Bridge as indeed Bonnie Prince Charlie planned to do in
December 1745.
From Th e Spot (an 18th century name) one descends St. Peter’s Street on
the alignment, which originally must have crossed the Markeaton Brook
on a ford at the bottom, then along Corn Market (widened in the early
Middle Ages to make room for the marketing of grains), up Rotten Row,
the west edge of what later (c. 1100) became the Market Place, up Iron
Gate and along Queen Street (part of King Street, renamed aft er 1760),
King Street, Darley Lane and thence along Darley Grove. Its course across
Darley Park (landscaped by William Emes 1777-78) shows up as a ridge
or agger, beyond which it leaves the northern edge of Derby to follow the
Derwent Valley. How much of it can be traced thence to the Peak is not
really researched, but I am sure it will be done in time.
Th is route, being pre-Roman in origin, lacks the straightness of a
course worked out by a Roman agrimensor (surveyor), but it does have
directness, although even that was aff ected by later developments. When
the minster church of St. Alkmund with its six canons was established,
some time aft er the evangelisation of the Kingdom of Mercia which
commenced aft er 655, the church and the canons’ houses and workshops
which served it were placed on the line of the old trackway, which was
without doubt in use then, for it was kinked around the tiny enclave to the
west before regaining the old alignment and continuing northwards.
Th e section from Darley Lane fell out of use in the 1750s when the road
to Manchester was a turnpike, and the modern Duffi eld Road was pitched
as a result, hence Robert Holden was able to empark the land to the south
of his seat at Darley Hall with impunity once the mood took him a couple
of decades later.
Next time you wander down St. Peter’s Street, wondering at the sheer
awfulness of Intu, or looking for post-Christmas bargains, remember that
you are walking along a road that began life as a long-distance trackway
more than two thousand years ago.
48 | CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk
Darley Grove photographed by Richard Keene