Sponsored by
Peterborough was a quaint market town 200 years ago
PETERBOROUGH today is a busy, thriving city, and because of our grand cathedral it is easy to imagine this was always the case – but this is not so, as Stuart Orme explained.
PETERBOROUGH today is a busy, thriving city, and because of our grand cathedral it is easy to imagine this was always the case – but this is not so, as Stuart Orme explained."By the end of the 18th century, Peterborough had become a bit of a backwater. It suffered greatly because of the Civil War and the plague. It had a population of about 5,000 and was a quaint market town," he said.
"Stamford, on the other hand, was considered far more important because it was a staging post for the mail coaches that went between London and York."
Peterborough was essentially a small place surrounded by fields.
Related:
East meets West Indies at Peterborough Museum display on 25/26 april 2009.
----------------------
"Basically Peterborough was the city centre. Everything south of the river was nothing to do with Peterborough. Woodston was part of Huntingdonshire and we were part of Northamptonshire.
"You could walk out of the city centre and by the time you get to Millfield there's fields."
In 1797, the Peterborough area became home to the first ever purpose-built prisoner of war camp.
This was constructed at Norman Cross to house men captured during the Napoleonic War.
Peterborough may seem a somewhat unusual venue for a PoW camp, but there were some logical reasons behind the decision.
"They were looking for somewhere to house them," Stuart said. "They'd traditionally been putting the prisoners in old castles or rotting ships on the Thames and they were running out of space.
"Peterborough was picked because it was easily accessed up the Great North Road, or by barge from the coast. It was easy to get the prisoners here, but it was thought to be far enough in land that it made escape difficult."
The camp held up to 7,000 prisoners at any one time, and up to 1,000 soldiers. It was closed in 1814, and the timber from the buildings auctioned off.
All that remains today is the former governors' house, which is now the Norman Cross Art Gallery.
Elsewhere in the city, today there are still example of buildings constructed at this time. There is what is now known as the Wortley Almshouses, The Bull Hotel, which was a coaching inn, and the museum itself, which was built in 1816 as a private house.
During this period, there was no significant black community in Peterborough. The earliest recorded member of the black community in the city is of a John Sherwood, who was just three feet tall, and, according to Cathedral records, was married there in July 1711.
Although Peterborough was not involved in the slave trade in the way that places like Bristol were, some city residents would have had indirect links with it, through investments.
"In those days it was considered perfectly normal, no one ever thought anything of it," Stuart said.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Peterborough
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: West
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.