Peterborough, cathedral and Italian heart

Peterborough is a city on the plains of eastern England, on the border between Cambridgeshire and the Fens, the low-lying land reclaimed from the marshes, and it surprises visitors with its Norman cathedral, one of the grandest in England, and with a special link to Italy: in the 1950s thousands of Italians, mostly from the south, came here to work in the brickworks, and today Peterborough is home to one of the largest Italian communities in the United Kingdom. With about 215,000 inhabitants, it is one of the fastest-growing British cities of recent decades, partly thanks to the new towns programme of the 1960s and 1970s. Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, is buried in its cathedral, and Mary, Queen of Scots, also lay here for twenty-five years.

Trains from London King's Cross take under an hour, and Cambridge is about fifty minutes away.

From Saxon abbey to brick city

Peterborough's story begins in 655, when a monastery called Medeshamstede, one of the first in England, was founded on the banks of the River Nene. Destroyed by the Vikings in 870, it was rebuilt in the 10th century and dedicated to St Peter: the town that grew around it took the name Peter's burgh. In 1070 the Saxon rebel Hereward the Wake, hero of the resistance against the Normans, sacked the abbey together with a band of Danes. After a fire, in 1118 the monks began building the great Romanesque church that is today's cathedral.

For centuries Peterborough remained a small market town. In the 19th century the railway arrived, making it an important junction on the line between London and the north, and a huge brick industry developed around it: the local clay, rich in combustible matter, allowed bricks to be fired with little coal, and the kilns of the London Brick Company, around the village of Fletton, produced a vast share of the bricks used in England for decades. In 1967 Peterborough was designated a new town: new districts, roads, parks and industrial estates doubled its population in a few years.

The cathedral

Peterborough Cathedral is one of the great masterpieces of Norman architecture in Europe. Its west front, with three enormous Gothic arches more than twenty metres high, is unique in the world and looks like a stage set. Inside, the long Romanesque nave keeps its 13th-century painted wooden ceiling, one of only four ceilings of this kind surviving in Europe, decorated with saints, kings, animals and monsters. Behind the altar, the New Building, added around 1500, has a splendid fan vault, typical of late English Gothic.

In the north aisle lies Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, who died in 1536 after being cast aside by the king: her simple grave is always decorated with flowers, pomegranates, her emblem, and Spanish flags. Every January the city holds a commemoration in her honour. To find out more, see our page on Catherine of Aragon. In 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, executed at nearby Fotheringhay Castle, was also buried in the cathedral; in 1612 her son, by then King James I of England, had her remains moved to Westminster Abbey.

The Italian community

After the Second World War the brickworks were desperately short of labour, and the London Brick Company began recruiting workers in Italy, especially in Campania, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria. From 1951 thousands of men arrived in Peterborough and nearby Bedford, followed in later years by their families. The work was extremely hard, in the heat of the kilns, and the first arrivals lived in hostels and huts. Over time the Italians bought houses, opened shops, restaurants and cafés, and founded associations, football teams and a Catholic parish.

Today thousands of people of Italian origin live in Peterborough, in the second and third generations. The city has Italian food shops, restaurants, pizzerias and associations, and every year religious festivals and traditions brought from home villages are celebrated. To find out more about the Italian presence in the country, read our page on Italians in the United Kingdom.

What to see in Peterborough

The historic centre

In front of the cathedral opens Cathedral Square, the main square, with the Guildhall, an elegant building of 1671 on columns, beneath which the butter market was once held, and the 15th-century church of St John the Baptist. From here run the pedestrian shopping streets and the large Queensgate shopping centre. Peterborough Museum, in a Georgian mansion that was also the city's first hospital, tells local history from dinosaurs to the Romans, with a section on an old Victorian operating theatre.

Longthorpe Tower

Just outside the centre, Longthorpe Tower is a 14th-century fortified tower that holds the finest and most complete medieval domestic wall paintings in northern Europe: Bible scenes, the ages of man, the senses represented by animals and the king of the wheel of life. It is managed by English Heritage and opens on certain days of the year.

Flag Fen

East of the city lies Flag Fen, one of the most important archaeological sites in Britain: here, more than three thousand years ago, in the Bronze Age, local people built a long timber causeway across the marsh with thousands of oak posts, and threw swords, jewellery and precious objects into the water as offerings. The mud has preserved the wood to this day. The visitor centre shows the original posts, reconstructed Bronze Age houses and the oldest wheel found in England.

Must Farm, the "British Pompeii"

A few kilometres east, in a clay quarry near Whittlesey, in 2015 and 2016 archaeologists excavated Must Farm, a Bronze Age village built on stilts over a river, destroyed by fire about 2,800 years ago and collapsed into the mud, which preserved it extraordinarily well. They found round houses with their contents, bowls with food remains still inside, very fine textiles, glass beads from the Mediterranean, tools and eight log boats. The press nicknamed it the "British Pompeii". Many finds are displayed at Peterborough Museum and in dedicated exhibitions.

Ferry Meadows and the steam railway

West of the city, along the Nene, lies Nene Park, with the Ferry Meadows country park: lakes, meadows, woods, cycle paths, water sports and picnic areas, much loved by families. Next to it runs the Nene Valley Railway, a heritage steam line linking Peterborough with the surrounding countryside; it is famous with children because it is often home to Thomas the Tank Engine, and with enthusiasts because it has locomotives and carriages from all over Europe.

A day in Peterborough

A possible itinerary: the morning at the cathedral, taking your time over the painted ceiling, Catherine of Aragon's grave and the fan vault. Continue with Cathedral Square, the Guildhall and the museum. After lunch in one of the city's Italian restaurants, spend the afternoon at Flag Fen or walking in Ferry Meadows, perhaps arriving by steam train. In the evening, dine by the river or see a show at the Key Theatre.

Eating and drinking

Thanks to its Italian community, Peterborough has better Italian food than many other English cities: pizzerias, trattorias, ice-cream parlours, pastry shops and delis selling products imported from Italy. The Fens around the city are one of the most fertile farming areas in the country, producing potatoes, onions, celery, beetroot and strawberries, which you can find at farmers' markets. Country pubs serve classic English dishes, from Sunday roasts to pies, with beers from small local breweries. Along the river, on the Embankment, there are bars and restaurants with outdoor tables.

Events

The city's calendar has some very popular events. In June the Heritage Festival fills the streets around the cathedral with historical re-enactments, with Roman soldiers, medieval knights and Civil War camps. In August, on the banks of the Nene, the Peterborough Beer Festival is held, one of the largest real ale festivals in England, with hundreds of beers and ciders. In summer Ferry Meadows hosts open-air concerts and outdoor cinema, while in December Cathedral Square comes alive with the Christmas market.

Poets and fens

In the village of Helpston, now within Peterborough, the poet John Clare was born in 1793, the son of farm labourers, who described like no one else the English countryside before the enclosure of common land, its birds, flowers and the lives of farm workers. His birthplace is now a small museum with a garden. All around stretch the Fens, flat and fertile plains crossed by straight drains and rows of poplars, where the sky fills almost the entire horizon: they were drained from the 17th century onwards with the help of Dutch engineers.

Sport

The city's football club, Peterborough United, is nicknamed The Posh, a name that, according to tradition, comes from an early 20th-century official who wanted "a posh team" for the city. It plays at the London Road Stadium and alternates between the second and third tiers.

Around Peterborough

• Burghley House, about twenty minutes away, one of the most spectacular Elizabethan houses in England, built by William Cecil, adviser to Elizabeth I, with rooms painted by the Italian artist Antonio Verrio and a large park.
• Stamford, a honey-coloured stone town considered among the most beautiful in England and the setting for many period films and series.
• Fotheringhay, the village where the castle stood in which Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded in 1587, and where the future King Richard III was born.
• Ely, with its cathedral known as "the ship of the Fens", visible for miles around.
• The abbeys of Crowland and Thorney, in the heart of the drained fens.
• Cambridge, less than an hour away, with its colleges.

Living in Peterborough

Peterborough has a diverse economy: logistics, thanks to its position on the main railway line and the A1 trunk road, financial services, environmental and manufacturing businesses, and a recently opened university. Homes cost much less than in London and Cambridge, and many residents commute to the capital. It is a multicultural city, where the Italian community has been joined by people of Pakistani, Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanian and other Eastern European origin. The historic centre is small, and some districts have low incomes.

Getting there and getting around

• By train: from London King's Cross in under an hour on fast East Coast Main Line trains; direct services to York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Leeds, Cambridge, Birmingham and Stansted Airport.
• By air: Stansted Airport is about an hour and a quarter by train; East Midlands Airport is about an hour and a half by car.
• By car: the city lies on the A1, the great road linking London with Scotland.
• In the city: the centre is walkable; buses serve Ferry Meadows, Flag Fen and the suburbs, and Nene Park has cycle paths along the river.

For travel around the rest of the country see trains and transport, and for other cities British cities.

Tips for your visit

• How long: one day for the cathedral, the centre and Flag Fen; another for Burghley and Stamford.
• When to go: May to September for the parks and the steam railway; January for the Catherine of Aragon commemoration.
• Don't miss: the cathedral's west front at sunset, when the stone turns pink and gold.
• A tip: for a coffee or a plate of pasta "just like home", ask locals for the names of restaurants and shops run by Italian families for generations.

Peterborough on the map

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