How Canning Circus has been at the crossroads of city life for centuries

CANNING Circus was named, like so many landmarks, as a homage to the great days of Queen Victoria and a father and son who served the country when Britain was the world's greatest colonial power.

- By ANDY SMART

George and son Charles John, Earl Canning, were pillars of respectability, the backbone of the Age of Empire. George was Foreign Secretary during the Napoleonic wars, and later became Prime Minister.

His youngest son was Governor-General of India during the Indian Mutiny and became its first viceroy.

Surprisingly, the area we know as Canning Circus, where Alfreton Road, Ilkeston Road, Derby Road and the Ropewalk meet, didn't get its name until 1931.

It was firs known as Zion Hill, until that title went out of use and it simply became known as “the top of Derby Road”.

And well before that it had been a graveyard, where murderers and suicide victims were buried, as it was custom, in the 18th century, to bury suicides and murderers at crossroads, on unconsecrated ground.

The last interment is believed to have been in 1829.