This is a slight departure for this blog, the usual premise of which is that every visit can be accomplished in a day, there and back, from where I live in Churton. The visit to Peterborough required a stop overnight. I have always wanted to see the Romanesque cathedral at Peterborough, which is a former Benedictine abbey. I set out by car early on a Wednesday in November 2023 and stayed one night in Peterborough near the town centre, visiting the cathedral both on the Wednesday afternoon and again on the Thursday morning. On my way home on Thursday afternoon I visited the lovely Normanton Church. The routes taken and other visiting details are at the end.
Peterborough Cathedral is covered in part 1 (here) and a very brief snapshot of Normanton Church on its custom-made plinth on Rutland Water is in part 2. Needless to say, I have barely skimmed the surface of the cathedral’s history.
Introduction
South transept
Peterborough Cathedral is somewhere I have wanted to visit from the moment that I laid eyes on photos of it in a book. It has an almost split personality with its magnificent and unique 3-bay Gothic frontage, its sublime Norman-Romanesque interior, the stunning painted nave ceiling and the almost organic delicacy of the fan vaulting in the date eastern extension.
The abbey was terminated in Henry VIII’s dissolution of all the monasteries, but like Chester Cathedral was fortunate to escape some of the indignities of this process when it was converted to a cathedral. The building that visitors see today, dedicated to St Peter with St Paul and St Andrew, is the third abbey. The first abbey, Medeshamstede, was destroyed by Danish invaders. The second abbey church, built over a century after the demolition of the first, burned down by accident although the cloisters survived. The third abbey church was started from scratch, and is remarkable for the survival of the magnificent Romanesque vision. All three abbeys were built on the same site, and there is some evidence for a Roman building beneath them. The three phases are described very briefly below. For detailed descriptions see one of the guide books available, or the cathedral website’s History page (details in Sources at the end). If you go in person, I recommend the guided tour.
The 7th Century Abbey – Medeshamstede
Artist’s impression of Medhamstede, shown on an information poster in the cathedral
Bede’s 8th century Ecclesiastical History says that the first abbey on the site, Medehamstede, was established in the 7th century, and it is now thought that it was founded in around 654, and was probably built of wood. A later phase may have seen the rebuild of the wooden walls in stone, imported from a quarry to the west. Very little is known about the building and its phases, although the artist’s impression to the right is a useful suggestion of what might have been on the site. The first abbey was very isolated, deliberately divorced from human settlement to provide a suitable environment for contemplation and prayer.
The River Nene in Peterborough
Perched on the side of the River Nene and on the edge of the marshlands and mudflats of the Fens, it was an ideal location for peaceful contemplation and prayer. For this and subsequent abbeys on the site the nearby marshy Fenlands provided one of the best resources for freshwater fish in England, offered a rich habitat for wildfowl and supported reed beds that provided the raw materials for thatching roofs. The land also had the farming potential required for an expanding self-sufficient and isolationist community, providing summer pasture for livestock, and later on, when improved techniques of land drainage were mastered, the opportunity for agricultural development. Communication links were provided by the River Nene and the nearby Roman road.
The monastic community would have been organized along very austere lines adhering to the so-called Celtic tradition of monasticism. The abbey became an important early religious centre, and founded a number of daughter houses in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Kent, Surrey, and Bermondsey (now in southeast London), which were important vanguards of the spread of Christianity. I
The Hedda Stone
Housed today in the cathedral chancel / presbytery is the Hedda Stone shown above, a large and beautifully sculpted piece of limestone belonging to this period of the abbey’s history, showing Christ, Mary and the Apostles. It is carved on both sides and pierced with holes that have no generally agreed purpose. It is quite easy to miss, so do make a point of finding it, as it is delightful.
In 870 the abbey was plundered and destroyed during a Danish attack on the east coast, and the site, now abandoned, became part of the Danelaw territory.
The 10th Century Abbey – Gildenburgh
Plan of Saxon and Medieval Peterborough showing the outline of the second church. F is the site of the gate stormed by Hereward and the Danes. It is thought that E is the old marketplace, replaced by the new town in 1133-1155. The motte is thought today to have been built by Abbot Thorold. Source: Current Archaeology 89, 1983
In the 10th century, Æthelwold of Winchester had a vision of Christ in which he was instructed to rebuild the abbey of St Peter. He was assisted in this challenge by Dunstan of Canterbury and by King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. It was consecrated in the early 970s by Dunstan as a Benedictine monastery (i.e. one following the guidelines for monastic life developed in the 6th century by St Bendict of Nursia, Italy). From fairly early on it was decided to provide it with a defensive wall, making it a fortified settlement or “burgh.” The church was laid out along traditional lines with a nave, two transepts and a chancel at its east end. It must have been provided with a belfry, because Æthelwold provided 10 bells for the church. Although there were no sources of stone and wood close to the site, these were imported from Barnack and Rockingham Forest respectively.
The prestige of the monastery rose when it acquired an important relic, the right arm of Oswald, a Saxon king and saint who was noted for his kindness to the poor and whose arm, with which he handed out so many alms, survived, perfectly preserved, after he was killed in battle. The monastery’s position was again strengthened in 1041 when one of the monks, Æthelric, was chosen as Bishop of Durham. The selection of the abbey as the final resting place for Ælfric Puttoc and subsequently Cynesige, both archbishops of York was an indication of how well regarded the abbey was in the 11th century. Like many Benedictine monasteries, it became a major landowner, becoming wealthy and both economically and architecturally ambitious, accumulating books for a library, and fine objects for its ceremonies and liturgies. It was so rich that it became known as the golden burgh, Gildenburgh.
Reconstruction of the abbey precinct at the time of Hereward’s attack. Source: Peterborough Abbey
The second abbey was still standing proud when William the Conqueror landed in England. Its abbot, Leofric, died in the Battle of Hastings. Abbot Brand, who followed him, was also Saxon and supported opposition to the Norman invasion. This opposition was punished with heavy taxation, and when Brand died in 1069 the abbey was put into the hands of an abbot, Thorold, loyal to William. In the event, a local Saxon rebel, Hereward, had found an ally in King Swein of Denmark, and in 1070 the Saxons and the Danes marched on Peterborough and plundered it. Although the arm of St Oswald was saved by the prior (second in command) the rest of the treasure vanished with the rebels. The abbey itself was badly damaged, and what survived was occupied by the abbot and sixty knights and significant portions of land that had once formed the basis of the abbey’s wealth was now allocated to many of those knights, filling the formerly rebellious countryside with loyal Normans.
When Thorold died in 1098 he was replaced by two successive abbots who had very little impact, but the third abbot to be appointed, in 1107, was Ernulf who was prior of Canterbury, a scholar with a good understanding of political manoeuvring, who had plenty of ambition for his new posting. He began by rebuilding the damage to the cloister buildings that had been largely destroyed by Hereward. In 1114 Ernulf moved on to Rochester and was replaced by Abbot John de Séez.
In early August 1116 when a fire broke out in the bakery and took most of what remained of the abbey church with it, although Ernulf’s new claustral buildings survived beyond the abbey church. A new church was now not only desirable but necessary.
Today’s abbey, established in the 12th Century
The Romanesque architecture
Plan of Peterborough Cathedral. Click to expand. NB – the “sanctuary” is referred to in most of the Peterborough Abbey literature as “presbytery” so I have stuck with the latter throughout. Source: Sweeting 1899, Project Gutenberg
Abbot John de Séez oversaw the construction of a stunning new Romanesque building, complete with a vast vaulted presbytery. The scale of his ambition saddled the abbey with such an enormous financial and logistical commitment that it took 120 years to complete. Masons who had worked at Durham were brought in to ensure that the most up to date civil engineering techniques were employed, and what unfolded was a mixture of magnificent vision and superb skills. The church was laid out on the usual cross-shape, with a long nave, side transepts (containing chapels) and a shorter east end. The south wall of the church (the righ thand side of the plan) made up the north wall of the cloisters, the administrative and domestic buildings were located, arranged around a square garden called the garth.
Entering the nave, the interior is light-filled and breathtaking. With windows on three levels, light pours in. Cromwell’s soldiers destroyed the medieval stained glass, and the plain replacement glass allows in much more light than the stained glass would have permitted. Of course it does help that the cathedral has installed artificial lighting, but even allowing for the changes, the layers of window and the soft, faintly reflective pallor of the Barnack limestone walls must have provided a degree of light that was remarkable in the Middle Ages.
View from just inside the west entrance to the end of the presbytery, with the pulpit in the foreground, and the modern rood (crucifix) hanging over the entrance to the Victorian choir
Because there is no surviving pulpitum (a stone division between nave and choir in monastic churches) or rood screen (again, between nave and choir), there is a very rare almost uninterrupted view from the west end entrance to the restored stained glass windows at the east end. In spite of the 19th century marble edifice that sticks up in the middle of the presbytery, the impression of a vanishing point is dramatic and gives a real sense of the length of the building. The walls soar upwards too, meeting a unique and fabulous painted ceiling.
On the death of Abbot John, the new Abbot Benedict, from Canterbury, persisted with the same vision. This is interesting because at Canterbury new ideas from France, captured in the Gothic style, were being implemented, but for whatever long-lost reason, Benedict retained the Romanesque plan that Abbot John had initiated, including semi-circular apses at the east end, one of which survives within the rectangular “New Building” that surrounds it. This apse is a rare survivor as most British churches had their apses removed for replacement by rectangular extensions such as Lady Chapels and similarly prestigious expansion projects. Benedict extended the original design west by two bays, and if you stand at the west end and look at the arches of the aisles you can clearly see the difference.
Blind arcading in the north aisle beneath the great arches of the windows
The nave and the two transepts contain the bulk of the easily visible Romanesque architecture. That within the east end presbytery is more difficult to view. The long nave with its side aisles is monumental. The massive arches of the aisles, with characteristic geometric decoration, are supported on vast octagonal piers. They are topped with another set of arches, each of which contains twin arches separated by slender columns topped with square capitals. The top level features rather smaller central arches, each flanked by even smaller blind arcades. The transept ends are simpler, each with three levels of of arches, each of the same size, with unpainted roof panels in the same lozenge shapes as those in the nave.
The lost cloister and infirmary
Artist’s impression of the cloister on an information board in the remains of the abbey cloisters.
Today’s cathedral was once the abbey church, and is a wonderful survival, but it was only one part of the monastic establishment. A cloister was always an integral part of the monastic establishment, with buildings along three sides of a courtyard or garden, with the church making up the fourth side. This cloister was usually on the south side of the church, sheltering it from the worst weather and providing it with seasonal sun. The central part of it was often a garden of some description, called the garth. The buildings arranged along the three sides included the refectory, where the monks ate, the dormitory where they slept and the chapter house where they held daily meetings. Some of these buildings could be very elaborate and ornate, particularly the chapter house.
If you leave through a door in the south side of the cathedral (on the right as you head from the entrance towards the end of the nave) or turn right in front of the cathedral and head down a narrow pathway, you will find yourself in what remains of the cloister. There is some very fine stonework left behind, giving a hint at the magnificent buildings that once stood here, and many of the changes that the buildings clearly underwent. The buildings were robbed for building materials following the Civil War.
Cloister wall, where it meets the abbey church
Beyond the cloister was the infirmary. Many monastic establishments were furnished with an infirmary, mainly to take care of the elderly and unwell within the monastic community, but most of these are long gone, and again there is some attractive gothic arcading that indicates where the monastic ifirmary was located, to the east of the cloister. It was built by Abbot John de Caux in around 1250. It is worth mentioning, because it gives some idea of the scale of the monastic operation at Peterborough.
Relics
The 12th century Becket Casket (Height 29.5cm; Width 34.4cm; Depth 12.4cm). Source: V&A Museum
No important abbey was viable without relics of saints, which gave it great spiritual credibility, prestige and integrity. Amongst the valuable relics collected were the arm of the Saxon saint Oswald of Northumbria. More prestigious by the 12th century were the bloodstained objects directly connected to the murder on 29th December 1170 of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury (the reliquary for which survives in the V&A museum). A 12th century genuine British martyr, canonized in 1173, was a remarkable thing, and the snaffling of authenticated relics for Peterborough was a real coup. Benedict did not witness the martyrdom, but he became an ardent collector and collator of Becket miracles. Becket had actually been to Peterborough, visiting with King Henry II in 1154. A chapel was built to St Thomas at the abbey gate in 1174 to hold this and other relics, allowing pilgrims access to monastic relics without permitting them to disrupt the abbey church itself.
Painted walls and woodwork
Romanesque cathedrals in Europe often preserve painted decorative patterns on walls and ceilings, some emulating red mortar, but only faint hints survive in Britain. Fortunately, some very delicate paintwork in Peterborough survives. As well as imitation mortar, and some lovely swirling curves, there is a truly charming section on the ceiling with tiny red flowers that may have been intended to evoke the Virgin Mary, who is often associated with red and white roses.
Within the apse, at the rear of the Presybytery, accessible from the New Building ambulatory, there are coats of arms painted on the white walls. Given that the eye is inevitably drawn first to the Hedda stone and the enormous marble high altar, it is easy not to notice the paintings. I have been unable to find out anything about them either in the literature I have to hand or on the Peterborough Cathedral website, but they probably belonged to wealthy benefactors of the abbey or the later cathedral.
The chapels in the south transept were provided with wooden screens to provide access and entry, and provide privacy. Remarkably, some of the decorative painting on these also survives.
The west front, the porch and the Lady Chapel
The Romanesque building did not escape the fashion for Gothic style embellishments. Tracery in the window arches, for example, is Gothic, and the Romanesque interior was topped and tailed with a remarkable Early English west front and a stunning fan-vaulted rectangular ambulatory around the central semi-circular apse at the east end.
The unique 3-bay frontage was started in 1195 but progress was halted when King John, and England as a whole, were excommunicated from the Catholic church in 1209. When the crisis was over, building resumed under Abbot Hugh, and it is thought that he made some changes the original design. The result is three 29m high arches at the front, the central one narrower than the two flanking ones. Inset into these are further arches. Flanking the arche tops and and built into the triangular gables above were a total of 22 figures looking out from the front, although many have crumbled and have now replaced. The three at the top of the gables are Saints Paul, Peter and Andrew. The figure at the very top of the central gable is St Peter, overlooking the entrance, and marking the transition from the impure outdoor world to the heavenly space within.
Following the 13th century fashion for adding a Lady Chapel to a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, one was built at Peterborough 1272-1286 to the north of the presbytery, accessed from the north transept, and was still standing by the 17th century, when it was taken down during the Civil War. It was in the Gothic style and was probably elaborately decorated and furnished.
A later Gothic porch, dating to 1375, protrudes from the middle of the west front. I was inclined to be more than a little judgmental about the porch, which looked like a very misguided vanity project, but I stand corrected. It was found that the central arch of the west front was beginning to tip forward, and the engineering solution was to create a wedge to prop it up. The structurally necessary wedge was designed as a Gothic style galilee porch with perpendicular windows, and although it breaks up the magnificent frontage, has done a great job of preventing its collapse.
The 15th century “New Building”
The so-called “New Building,” a sublime gothic vision, is in fact an eastward extension of the Romanesque cathedral. The New Building was probably built between 1496 and 1508 by star architect John Wastell of Bury St Edmunds (later responsible for the fan vaulting at Westminster Abbe, under the abbey’s superior, Abbot Robert Kirkton. This was no mere add-on, but a fabulously imagined and beautifully crafted piece of fan-vaulted delight. The abbot who took the gamble of gluing on an extension to a perfectly conceived Romanesque delight lived up to the legacy of his predecessors. The ceiling bosses, some of which are shown in the above photograph, were carved with both secular and religious themes showing coats of arms, symbols of the saints, and other familiar subjects. The job of the extension was to enclose the central semi-circular apse within a rectangular extension, providing a low-level ambulatory around the inner sanctum, which rises above it, for ceremonial processions. Ambulatories often contain additional chapels, but the cathedral’s architecture remains largely uninterrupted and therefore retains the impact of the fabulous fan-vaulting, which is one of the largest examples in England.
Ceiling boss showing the instruments of the passion
The New Building also, of course, delivered some fairly glossy feathers to the cap of the abbot who was so pleased with himself that he incorporated his name, a partial rebus, into the building itself. Abbot Robert Kirkton was not a self-effacing man – his initials are also conspicuous in the elaborate Prior’s Gate that he built and which celebrated key royal figures in the form of their heraldry, and ornamented with Marian roses, managing to be both obsequious and self-congratulatory.
Prior’s Gate by Abbot Kirkham
The unique 13th century painted ceiling
Magnificent painted ceiling of the nave
Deserving a post in its own right, the wooden ceiling is a marvel. Unique, it was started in around 1238 and was finsihed sometime in the 1240s. It is made up of a series of lozenge-shaped panels, which one painted either with a small scene or with leaf and floral motifs. The repeating pattern of the lozenges is dramatic from below. Interpretation of the scenes has established that the individual subjects are arranged into a series of core themes, but there is much that it still unclear. Obvioulsy religious scenes like the Creation, The Lamb of God, Saints Peter and Paul and the Anti-Christ are accompanied by historical clerics and kings, music, astronomy and the liberal arts. A scene showing a money riding backwards on a galloping goat whilst holding an owl is a representation of folly. John Foyles dedicates several pages to the ceiling in his book and there is a book about it by Jackie Hall and Susan Wright for those who want to delve deeper (see sources at the end).
Unpainted wooden ceilings over the apses are also arranged in lozenges, and are very fine in their own right.
Lozenge-shaped framed painting on the ceiling of the nave., showing St Paul holding a sword in his right hand and a book in his left (panel C7). The sword evokes the means of his martyrdom (beheading) and the book represents his epistles.
The Tudors before the Dissolution
The main contribution of the Tudors to the cathedral are the tombs of Katherine of Aragon, who died in 1536 and Mary Queen of Scots in 1587.
Katharine of Aragon had been married to the heir to the English throne, Arthur, elder brother of the future Henry VIII. When Arthur died, Henry VIII married his widowed sister-in-law. When the marriage failed to produce the necessary male heir, Henry decided to annul the marriage. Unable to obtain papal permission to do so, he split from the papacy and established the Church of England. Katherine was shuffled off to Kimbolton Castle, where Henry hoped that if she was out of sight of the public, she would also be out of mind. When she died she provided, on Henry’s orders, with a tomb in Peterborough Abbey, the nearest important ecclesiastical building to Kimbolton. Here she was identified as the widow of Henry’s brother Arthur. This was presumably Henry’s excuse for not granting her a place in Westminster Abbey. Deposited under the floor up against the south side of the presbytery, where she would be close to God, she was provided with a monument above the grave. This was destroyed in the Civil War, but the grave beneath remains in situ, marked by a stone slab and gold lettering.
The Dissolution
The opening page of the Valor Ecclesiasticus (the survey of monastic establishments that paved the way to the Dissolution), showing Henry VIII. Source: Wikipedia
The New Building had only just been finished in the first years of the 1500s when Henry VIII fell out with the Catholic papacy. Henry, having found a way to both dissolve a marriage that produced a daughter but no male heir to his throne, and simultaneously remove papal authority over both his personal affairs and the management of the church, also found that being the head of his own Church of England enabled him to raise substantial funds by laying claim to all the properties and goods of the monasteries, priories and friaries, by simply denying their ongoing right to exist. The Dissolution caught up with Peterborough abbey in 1539, which had survived the first round of closures that took place in 1536. The abbot at the time was John Chambers, and he was unusually fortunate. He took no part in the protests in Lincoln or the Pilgrimage of Grace, and although initially pensioned off his meek resignation to the inevitable was rewarded. Whether it was because of the creation of new dioceses at this time, or because Henry VIII’s first wife Katherine of Aragon was buried here in 1536, the abbey escaped demolition and was converted instead to a cathedral in 1541 with John Chambers as its first bishop. Of all the 100s of abbeys, priories and friaries that were dissolved by Henry VIII, only a handful were converted to cathedrals, of which Chester Cathedral is another example.
Fifty years later Peterborough was again the royal choice of burial place for an embarrassing queen. Executed in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was buried on the opposite side of the presbytery from Queen Katharine. She remained there for 25 years until her son, James I, removed her remains to Westminster Abbey.
The Civil War
Peterborough, from Speed’s 1610 map, shortly before the Civil War. Source: Sweeting 1899, Project Gutenberg
During the English Civil War of 22 August 1642 – 3 September 1651, each side attempted to use the medieval castles to gain advantage. The result was that many 13th century castles were slighted (demolished) to prevent re-use at the end of the Civil War. Castles were fair game, but religious institutions were also targeted because they represented a different threat – the challenge to Puritan religious belief. Henry VIII had rejected Catholic authority, but his Church of England was established for convenience, and the Church of England contained many lingering aspects of its Catholic ancestry. Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers were given free reign to obliterate any of the artistic signs of lingering tendencies to papism to force through reform. What they could reach they either maimed or destroyed. What they could not reach they sometimes hit with musket fire.
One of three surviving misericords at Peterborough Cathedral
At Peterborough, as in so many places, the medieval stained glass was demolished. Some of the stained glass windows at the east end today was formed of the fragments that people picked up and saved after the Puritans had left. The painted ceiling over the east end apse was shot with muskets, but somehow the ceiling over the nave was missed. The choir stalls, together with the misericords (the so-called mercy seats once in the choir stalls, all of which were carved with fascinating scenes on their undersides) were also destroyed at this time. Only three of the misericords survive (at Chester there are 48 misericords, which gives some idea of the level of destruction at Peterborough). The survivors are preserved in a chapel on the south side of the nave near the entrance, a sad reminder that something quite spectacular has been lost. The high altar was also destroyed. The cloister buildings were used as the raw materials for nearby Thorpe Hall.
The 17th and 18th centuries
This sub-heading would normally be an exercise in naming and shaming, but, amazingly, the abbey has not suffered the usual indignities of an important ecclesiastical building during this period. There are no 17th and 18th century monuments jostling for position on the walls to undermine the sense of coherence and uniform splendour. The soaring nave in Westminster Abbey, utterly spoiled by truly awful funerary memorials, is a good example of how badly a beautiful building can be dramatically undermined by later insensitivities. Although some of the monuments in Peterborough Cathedral were damaged during the Reformation, there seem to have been restrictions on the number permitted.
The biggest surviving monument is baroque, dedicated to wool merchant Thomas Deacon, former high sheriff of Northamptonshire and founder of a charity school for 20 boys. He died in 1730. His wife, who died 10 years later, is also commemorated on the monument. I would much rather that it had not been built in the cathedral, at the entrance to the New Building, because it is such an alien presence, but it is a particularly fine example of its type.
The Victorians
Two of the most active restorers of the Victorian period were Sir George Gilbert Scott and John L. Pearson. Unfortunately, although their ideas of restoration included the valuable rescue and repair of serious damage and decay, it also involved what they clearly thought of as improvements to the original vision of earlier architects and artists. Enthusiasts of Chester Cathedral and Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen will probably have Gilbert Scott’s name ringing in their ears.
The crossing
In the late 1800s the tower was on the verge of collapse and it was Pearson who was responsible for dismantling and rebuilding it, a massive undertaking that saved the cathedral from irreparable harm. His work altered the 14th century tower but was done to blend in with the existing architecture. The twin sets of choir stalls, to the east of where the originals were located, the cathedra (bishop’s throne) and the pulpit are also Pearson’s work, and although clearly not medieval, are a skilled emulation of a medieval style quire. Pearson’s, however, was the evil genius that created the temple-like marble high altar within the presbytery as well as the cosmati floor leading up to it.
Cosmati floor
Gilbert Scott was responsible for the painted ceiling over the apse, which he claimed at the time was based on the damaged example that he was replacing. It is unmistakeably Victorian in its rendition and colouring.
Gilbert Scott’s ceiling in the apse
In this period the circular cast iron Gurney stoves were added, manufactured by The London Warming and Ventilating Company who bought the patent registered in 1856 by Goldsworth Gurney, surgeon turned engineer. The stove looks like the filter in my wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner, with ribs standing out from a central cylinder, distributing heat in a full circle. It was fired by anthracite, and the entire thing sat in a trough of water, helping to add humidity to the air. Peterborough cathedral retains several of them, and they are in many other cathedrals too. The Peterborough ones are powered by either as or oil, and they do a stunning job.
Modern additions
There has been some restoration work in the last few decades, but the emphasis has generally been on preservation rather than modernization. For example, many of the badly decaying figures on the west front were replaced by Alan Durst between 1949 and 1975.
A particularly noticeable modern addition is a hanging rood – a red crucifix with Christ in gold affixed to it, suspended from the ceiling at the east end of the nave, added in 1975. This hangs above the line that the rood screen would have taken across the nave. Up against the south side of the presbytery some very fine gold lettering, was put in place to mark the burial place of Mary Queen of Scots, which works well. In the New Building, someone has seen fit to place framed photographs on the walls between the fan-vaulting columns, which really doesn’t do the architecture any favours. The entrance to the west end has automated glass doors, which add to the light, and there is of course the inevitable gift shop on your left as you enter. Outside, Thomas Becket’s chapel is now a tea room.
Final Comments
The Romanesque is so comparatively rare in Britain, that this stunningly coherent and unfettered example is a particularly amazing treat. When the decision was made to extend the east end in a contrasting style, the slender, delicate columns and fan-vaulting of the New Building provided contrasting but additional brilliance. Moving through the building from the Norman to gothic gives the sense of being in an ecclesiastical time machine, a transition from one perfect world to another.
There is so much more to be said about the abbey and its features, inside and out, so much that has been missed out here. If you decide to visit, you won’t be disappointed.
Visiting
View from the choir to the east end
I am accustomed to driving to southeast London, so rather than looking at other options I took was my usual route, zipping down the A41, the M54, the M6 and the A14. From the A14 the A605 goes straight to Peterborough and I was there, end to end with no delays, in just over three hours. The A41 is always the joker in the pack because it is a long way from Chester to the M54, there are very few sections of dual carriageway and it can be difficult to overtake if you find yourself behind something slow. The A5 to Shrewsbury and the M54 is sometimes quicker.
The cathedral opening times are on the website, where any special events and closures are shown. Although I had done some top-level background reading I was lucky enough to arrive half an hour before a Highlights Tour was due to start, so I had a wander around on my own and then returned to the entrance for the tour. I failed to get my guide’s name, which is particularly sad as I had her to myself, November being a quiet time of year, and we had a great chat. She was splendidly knowledgable, encouraged my stream of questions and added multiple layers of detail and interpretation to my visit.
There was full-on white frost resembling snow over the days that I visited, and it was exceedingly cold, but thanks to the deployment of multiple Gurney stoves in the cathedral (fabulous heat-generating monsters like the ones in Chester Cathedral), I actually had to take off my top layer. It is the first cathedral I’ve ever visited that actually felt cosy!
For those who are dealing with unwilling legs, Peterborough as a whole is on the flat. The cathedral has very few steps to negotiate, automated doors provide access to the cathedral, a ramp is provided to get into the chancel from the New Building to visit the Hedda stone, and there are a great many places to sit down even beyond the nave.
I returned home via Normanton Church (see my short post with photos), for no better reason than it looked pretty and I do love a well-proportioned Georgian church, so my return journey was different, following the A606 to Melton Mowbray (I didn’t stop but it looks interesting), the A6006 and the A50 to Stoke on Trent and Nantwich, and the A534 home. Thanks to a convoy of lorries on the A6006 it was slow going but it was a spectacularly beautiful day and the unfamiliar landscape showed to terrific advantage in the sunshine. The A50 is dual carriageway, very unlovely but a smooth run. The drive from Peterborough to Churton, via Normanton Church, took me just over four hours (not including the time wandering around at Normanton).
Sources
Books and papers
Pair of figures believed to be Roman, possibly late 2nd century. In the west wall of the south transept
Biddick, Kathleen. 1992. The Other Economy: Pastoral Husbandry on a Medieval Estate. University of California Press
Foyle, Jonathan. 2018. Peterborough Cathedral. A Glimpse of Heaven. Scala
Higham, Jack (Revd. Canon). 2001. Peterborough Cathedral. The Pitkin Guide. Pitkin
Selkirk, Andrew and Selkirk, Wendy 1983. Peterborough. Current Archaeology, no.89, vol.VIII, October 1983, p.182-183
Sweeting, W.D. (Revd.) 1899 (second edition). The Cathedral Church of Peterborough. A Description of its fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See. G. Bell and Sons Ltd.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13618/13618-h/13618-h.htm
Book about the nave’s painted ceiling (which I have not read, but is listed here for those who would like to find out more)
Jackie Hall and Susan Wright (eds.) 2015. Conservation & Discovery: Peterborough Cathedral Nave Ceiling and Related Structures. MOLA———
Websites
Peterborough Cathedral website
https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/
Visiting: https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/home/visiting.aspx
History: https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/history.aspx
The painted nave ceiling: https://peterborougharchaeology.org/peterborough-cathedral-nave-ceiling/
Abbot Benedict: https://peterboroughcathedral.wordpress.com/tag/abbot-benedict/
Katherine of Aragon: https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/home/katharine-of-aragon.aspx
National Character Area Profile: 46. The Fenlands
Natural England
https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/5742315148673024
Books by Abbot Benedict of Peterborough available online
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Benedict%2C%20Abbot%20of%20Peterborough%2C%20%2D1193
Antarctic Heritage Trust
The Gurney Stove in Antarctica
https://nzaht.org/gurneystove/
Based in Churton 
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