Peterborough ( ) is a cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. The city is north of London, on the River Nene. As of the 2021 census, the Peterborough urban area had a population of 192,178, In 2023, the Peterborough City Council estimated the population of the wider district to be 219,510.
Human settlement in the area began before the Bronze Age, as can be seen at the Flag Fen archaeological site to the east of the city centre. There is evidence of Roman occupation. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the establishment of a monastery, Medeshamstede, which later became Peterborough Cathedral. In the 19th century, the population grew rapidly after the coming of the railway. The area became known for its brickworks and engineering. After the Second World War, industrial employment fell and growth was limited until Peterborough was designated a new town in the 1960s. The main economic sectors now are financial services and distribution.
The city was the administrative centre of the Soke of Peterborough in the historic county of Northamptonshire, until the Soke was abolished in 1965. From 1965 to 1974, it formed part of the short-lived county of Huntingdon and Peterborough and since then has been part of Cambridgeshire.
The cathedral city of Ely is east-southeast across the Fens and the university city of Cambridge is to the southeast. The local topography is flat and in places the land lies below sea level.
History Toponymy The original name of the town was Medeshamstede. The town's name changed to Burgh from the late tenth century, possibly after Abbot Kenulf had built a defensive wall around the abbey, which was dedicated to Saint Peter; eventually this developed into the form Peterborough. In the 12th century the town was also known as Gildenburgh, which is found in the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see Peterborough Chronicle below) and a history of the abbey by the monk Hugh Candidus.Garmonsway (pp.183 & 198–99); Mellows, 1949 (p.66). As a modern local historian has put it, this was "a rhetorical term" used in these 12th century local histories "to contrast the riches of the late Anglo-Saxon monastery with the decrease in income caused by later impositions and the despoliation of the monastic treasure by Hereward", see Tebbs, Herbert F. Peterborough: A History (p.23) The Oleander Press, Cambridge, 1979. The town does not appear to have been a borough until at least the 12th century.Originating in a new name for the abbey at Medeshamstede, and not the town, the name Burh was adopted for the abbey in the late 10th century, see Garmonsway (p. 117), also Mellows, William Thomas (ed.) The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus a Monk of Peterborough (pp.38 & 480) Oxford University Press, 1949, ; the addition of Peter, the name of the abbey's principal titular saint, parallels development of e.g. the name Bury St Edmunds and will have served to distinguish between the two places. Exemplified in mediaeval records in the Latinised form , this gave rise to the modern name Peterborough.
Early history Peterborough and its surrounding areas have been inhabited for thousands of years because it is where permanently drained land in The Fens is created by the River Nene. Remains of Iron Age settlement and what is thought to be religious activity can be seen at the Flag Fen archaeological site to the east of the city centre. The Romans established a fortified garrison town at Durobrivae on Ermine Street, to the west in Water Newton, around the middle of the 1st century AD. Durobrivae's earliest appearance among surviving records is in the Antonine Itinerary of the late 2nd century.Parthey, Gustav and Pinder, Moritz (eds.) Itinerarivm Antonini Avgvsti et Hierosolymitanum: ex libris manu scriptis Iter Britanniarvm (Iter V: Item a Londinio Luguvalio ad vallum mpm clvi sic) Friederich Nicolaus, Berlin, 1848. See also Reynolds, Thomas Iter Britanniarum or that part of the itinerary of Antoninus which relates to Britain with a new comment J. Burges, Cambridge, 1799. There was also a large 1st century Roman fort at Longthorpe, designed to house half a legion, or about 3,000 soldiers;They came, they saw Top 30 Roman sites (6), Channel 4 Television (Retrieved 20 July 2008). it may have been established as early as around AD 44–48. Peterborough was an important area of ceramic production in the Roman period, providing Nene Valley Ware that was traded as far away as Cornwall and the Antonine Wall, Caledonia.
Peterborough is shown by its original name Medeshamstede to have possibly been an Anglian settlement before AD 655, when Sexwulf founded a monastery on land granted to him for that purpose by Peada of Mercia, who converted to Christianity and was briefly ruler of the smaller Middle Angles sub-group. His brother Wulfhere murdered his own sons, similarly converted and then finished the monastery by way of atonement.
Hereward the Wake rampaged through the town in 1069 or 1070. Outraged, Abbot Turold erected a fort or castle, which, from his name, was called Mont Turold: this mound, or hill, is on the outside of the deanery garden, now called Tout Hill, although in 1848 Tot-hill or Toot Hill. Scheduled Monument The abbey church was rebuilt and greatly enlarged in the 12th century.Tim Tatton-Brown and John Crook, The English Cathedral, New Holland (2002) The Peterborough Chronicle, a version of the Anglo-Saxon one, contains unique information about the history of England after the Norman conquest, written here by monks in the 12th century.Bodleian, MS. Laud 636 (E), see Ingram, James Henry (trans.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1823 (facsimile of the 1847 Everyman's Library ed. with additional readings from the translation of John Allen Giles from Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 19 September 2007). . A modern edition, comparing the Peterborough version with such others as survive, is in Garmonsway, George Norman (trans.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1972 & 1975. . For the Peterborough Chronicle's unique information, see also Clark, Cecily (ed.) The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154 (pp. xxi–xxx) Oxford University Press, 1958. This is the only known prose history in English between the conquest and the later 14th century.Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter Middle English Literature (ed. and completed by Douglas Gray), Oxford University Press, 1986. The burgesses received their first charter from "Abbot Robert" – probably Robert of Sutton (1262–1273).Chisholm, Hugh (ed.) Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.) vol.21 Cambridge University Press, 1911 (text in the public domain). The place suffered materially in the war between King John and the confederate barons, many of whom took refuge in the monastery here and in Crowland Abbey, from which sanctuaries they were forced by the king's soldiers, who plundered the religious houses and carried off great treasures. The abbey church became one of Henry VIII's retained, more secular, cathedrals in 1541, having been assessed at the Dissolution as having revenue of £1,972.7s.0¾d per annum.
When civil war broke out, Peterborough was divided between supporters of King Charles I and the Long Parliament. The city lay on the border of the Eastern Association of counties which sided with Parliament, and the war reached Peterborough in 1643 when soldiers arrived in the city to attack Royalist strongholds at Stamford and Crowland. The Royalist forces were defeated within a few weeks and retreated to Burghley House, where they were captured and sent to Cambridge.Davies, Elizabeth et al. Peterborough: A Story of City and Country, People and Places (pp.18–19) Peterborough City Council and Pitkin Unichrome, 2001. While the Parliamentary soldiers were in Peterborough, however, they ransacked the cathedral, destroying the Lady Chapel, chapter house, cloister, high altar and choir stalls, as well as mediaeval decoration and records.King, Richard J. /Peterborough/1.html Handbook to the Cathedrals of England (p.77) John Murray, London, 1862. .
Among the privileges claimed by the abbot as early as the 13th century was that of having a prison for felons taken in the Soke of Peterborough, a liberty within Northamptonshire. This afforded it administrative and judicial independence from the rest of the county, with it having a quarter sessions separate from the rest of Northamptonshire from 1349. In 1576 Bishop Edmund Scambler sold the lordship of the hundred of Nassaburgh, which was coextensive with the Soke, to Queen Elizabeth I, who gave it to Lord Burghley, and from that time until the 19th century he and his descendants, the Earls and Marquesses of Exeter, had a separate gaol for prisoners arrested in the Soke. The abbot formerly held four fairs, of which two, St. Peter's Fair, granted in 1189 and later held on the second Tuesday and Wednesday in July, and the Brigge Fair, granted in 1439 and later held on the first Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in October, were purchased by the corporation from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1876. The Bridge Fair, as it is now known, granted to the abbey by King Henry VI, survives."At the bridge of Peterborough by the River Nene, as well in the county of Huntingdon as in the county of Northampton, on all sides of the bridge." Prayers for the opening of the fair were once said at the morning service in the cathedral, followed by a civic proclamation and a sausage lunch at the town hall which still takes place. The mayor traditionally leads a procession from the town hall to the fair where the proclamation is read, asking all persons to "behave soberly and civilly, and to pay their just dues and demands according to the laws of the realm and the rights of the City of Peterborough".Tebbs (p.125).
Industrialisation Railway lines began operating locally during the 1840s, but it was the 1850 opening of the Great Northern Railway's line from London to that transformed Peterborough from a market town to an industrial centre. Lord Exeter had opposed the railway passing through Stamford, so Peterborough, situated between two main terminals at London and Doncaster, increasingly developed as a regional hub.Brooks, John [web.archive.org/web/20050513152328/http://www.towns.org.uk/market-towns-projects/Market-Towns-Food-and-Tourism-Guides~3.pdf A Flavour of the Welland] (p.12) The Welland Partnership and Jarrold Publishing, Norwich, 2004.