The Victorian graveyard that existed on the site of the Queensgate Roundabout - and how ‘body-snatchers’ wreaked havoc there
The burial ground was in use between 1805 and 1858
Used by thousands of motorists each day, Peterborough’s Queensgate Roundabout has remained a vital part of city centre infrastructure for nearly five decades.
The roundabout and nearby road network were redeveloped in the late 1970s ahead of the Queensgate Shopping Centre’s grand opening in 1982.
Running underneath the roundabout is an underpass connecting the railway station with Cowgate.
The underpass will soon be filled in with concrete as part of the City Link project, allowing for a new ground-level pedestrian walkway to be built.
Like many other parts of the city, the roundabout site has undergone many changes over the decades, and many readers will no doubt remember it long before the nearby shopping centre came along.
But in the 19th century the site performed a far more sombre purpose than acting as a key route between the railway station and city centre.
The Parish Burial Ground
In use between 1805 and 1858, the Parish Burial Ground was located on a three-acre site at the bottom of Cowgate, covering the present-day Queensgate Roundabout.
The burial ground was opened in the early 19th century due to the lay-persons cemetery on the north side of the Cathedral becoming overcrowded.
According to the Peterborough Civic History Society, the first person buried at the site was Elizabeth Money in March 1805.
Like many cemeteries of the Georgian and Victorian eras, the Parish Burial Ground suffered at the hands of grave robbers.
In a time of advances in medicine and surgery, the demand for human bodies for dissection was high.
With medical schools constantly in need of bodies, grave robbers would steal freshly-buried corpses to sell on.
The worst years for body-snatching at the Parish Burial Ground were between 1827 and 1830. As a result, the walls around the burial ground were replaced with iron railings.
The Parish Burial Ground stopped accepting new burials in the late 1850s, but remained open for members of the public to tend to graves.
The site remained largely unchanged for the subsequent four decades, before a number of gravestones were removed in 1911 for a road redevelopment.
By the late 1970s, all visible signs of the burial ground had been removed to allow for the Queensgate Shopping Centre redevelopment.
While the burial ground itself may have been lost, a blue plaque at the end of Cowgate marks the spot where the cemetery once stood.