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Well that was a surprise- I thought I’d booked a tour of Katharine of Aragon’s tomb in the cathedral but it turned out it was a walking tour of Tudor Peterborough - 5C with an 84 year old mother - eek. Fortunately, the guide was brilliant- I accosted her in the museum cafe and to my delight she decided to lunch with us and give us a personal brief just in case we didn’t stick the hour. We did !
From what I can gather Peterborough was awarded its cathedral not because it was a great medieval settlement, but due to its location and some ambitious abbots. Although there’d been an early Anglo Saxon church this was destroyed by the Vikings. The settlement was built around the abbey and pilgrimages attracted by relics of Mercian princesses, Becket and St Oswald’s arm. The city we know today is dominated by 70s “newtown”, building on brick and railways, overlooked by Gormley’s striking figures on the rooftops of the amazing market square.
Click the links in the text to learn more
There are links to each of the points in the text but if you want to learn more about Peterborough Cathedral check out
https://peterboroughcathedral.wordpress.com/category/2020-tales-from-tour-guides/
25 tales each with a different focus on an aspect of the cathedral
There are links to each of the points in the text but if you want a full discussion of the history of cathedrals in England from a learned Oxford academic - check out this lecture script https://www.perthcathedral.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Why-Do-We-Have-Cathedrals.pdf
There are links to each point in the text but if you want a full and fascinating history of Peterborough - check this out
https://www.themomentmagazine.com/history/features-history/peterborough-from-past-to-present-and-beyond/