City in Cambridgeshire, England
Peterborough
Peterborough's football club is called the Posh, two queens were buried in its cathedral, and its bricks helped build half of Britain.
Key information
- County
- Cambridgeshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 216,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Cathedral, Fletton bricks, Flag Fen, Peterborough United
- What locals are called
- Peterborians
- Famous people
- Hereward the Wake, Henry Royce, Peter Boizot
- Football clubs
- Peterborough United (the Posh)
About Peterborough
The football club that took its name from a manager's boast
Peterborough United are known everywhere as the Posh, and the nickname is older than the club. According to the story, in 1921 a manager named Pat Tirrell was recruiting for the town's earlier side and said he wanted "posh players" for a "posh team". The label stuck, and it passed to United when they formed in 1934. The club joined the Football League in 1960 and marked its arrival in style. In 1960-61 the Posh scored 134 goals on the way to the Fourth Division title, a league record that has never been beaten. They play at London Road, one of the more distinctive grounds in the lower leagues. The club's best-known backer was Peter Boizot, a Peterborough man who founded PizzaExpress and later became United's chairman.
A cathedral with two queens in its story
Peterborough Cathedral is largely Norman, but its showpiece is the monumental west front, with three enormous arches that make the building look as though it is wearing a stone mask. That front is Early English Gothic and dates from the thirteenth century. Inside, the painted wooden nave ceiling is also thirteenth century and is among the oldest of its kind in the country. The cathedral also hosted royal funerals. Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was buried here in 1536. Mary, Queen of Scots, was laid to rest here after her execution at nearby Fotheringhay in 1587. Her son James I later had her moved to Westminster Abbey, in 1612. The church began as a monastery called Medeshamstede, founded around 655 by Peada, a king of Mercia. The town's name comes from the monastery's patron, St Peter.
Vikings, a rebel and a chronicle
Peterborough's early history was violent. Danish raiders burned the monastery in 870. In 1070 the Anglo-Saxon rebel Hereward the Wake, with Danish allies, attacked it, supposedly to keep its treasures from the incoming Norman abbot. The monks later wrote one of the most important texts of early English. The Peterborough Chronicle, a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, kept going until 1154, long after the others had stopped. It shows Old English changing into the language we call Middle English.
A Bronze Age causeway across the fens
Long before the monks, Bronze Age people built a vast timber causeway across the wet fens on the edge of the city. Its timbers date to roughly 1400-1000 BC. Flag Fen was discovered in 1982 by archaeologist Francis Pryor. Its timbers and the objects found around it, including swords and other metalwork apparently thrown into the water as offerings, point to a place of ceremony as well as travel. The site is still excavated and interpreted today, with reconstructed roundhouses on show. It makes Peterborough one of the best places in Britain to see how people lived and worshipped around 3,000 years ago.
The brick that built Britain's suburbs
Around Fletton, the local Oxford clay is so rich in natural fuel that it needs far less coal to fire. That made Fletton bricks cheap and quick to produce, and from the late nineteenth century brickworks and tall chimneys sprang up across the area. Millions of the bricks went into houses and public buildings across the country. The city became an industrial centre in other ways too. Perkins Engines was founded here in 1932, making high-speed diesel engines. Engineering was already important, with Henry Royce, of Rolls-Royce fame, born in nearby Alwalton in 1863. The railway helped the town grow, because Peterborough sits on the East Coast Main Line, roughly halfway between London and York.
A new-town makeover, a Bond railway and green spaces
Peterborough was designated a new town in 1967, and the population grew fast. Its Queensgate shopping centre opened in 1982, and big estates spread out around the old centre. Even so, the Guildhall, built in 1671 on stone pillars in the Cathedral Square, still sits at the middle of town. Outside the centre, Nene Park and its lakes at Ferry Meadows give the city a large green playground. The steam Nene Valley Railway runs foreign locomotives and appeared in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, where it stood in for a line in East Germany. Locals are called Peterborians, and the city is also known as a place where many different communities have settled, with food that reflects it. Italian families brought bakeries and ice cream here in the twentieth century, and today the city has plenty of Polish, Pakistani, Lithuanian and Indian restaurants and shops.