We fancied another pilgrimage and we settled on Peterborough in neighbouring Cambridgeshire, with its epic house of God. While I may be a dedicated heathen, I totally get that back in the days of the great unschooled, the sheer scale and splendour of such colossal erections could keep even the doubters in line. How could mere mortals create such magnificence without the guiding hand of the Almighty? So we jumped on the cross-country ‘Let’s Roll With Pride’ themed train from Norwich.
Peterborough Cathedral was originally founded sometime during the 7th century as an Anglo-Saxon monastery called Medeshamstede. The community thrived until the 9th century before being sacked by pillaging Vikings. To avoid any repeat of that maker-meeting misfortune, the monks enclosed a rebuilt Medeshamstede in thick stone walls, and the settlement became a ‘Burh’ – a ‘fortified’ place. The name ‘Peter’ was then prefixed to honour the monastery’s principal titular saint, and thus Peterborough was born. Or maybe a simpler explanation is that no one could actually pronounce Medeshamstede. Whatever the reason, the abbey church was finally re-consecrated as a cathedral in the 16th century when that old bed-hopping plunderer Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and pilfered their assets to pay for all those lavish royal weddings and glittering codpieces.
What you see today is mostly 12th-century Norman with a few later Gothic add-ons. As we wandered around, we could hear a heavenly choir rehearsing for an evening concert. The divine sound filled the enormous space – a holy tune amplified by superb acoustics.
A bit of a surprise was the discovery that Mary, Queen of Scots was buried in the cathedral after she lost her head for plotting against the first Queen Elizabeth. Mary got the last laugh, though. The Virgin Queen died childless and Mary’s own son, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England, thus uniting the crowns. James had his mother’s remains moved to Westminster Abbey. The rest, as they say…
Looking around a big pile works up a big thirst so afterwards we decamped to a local hostelry for a few sherries. It was called the Queen’s Head and featured, yes, you guessed it, the Queen’s head – of the second Queen Elizabeth.
Today, Peterborough often gets a bad press but we found it to be a vibrant and entertaining city with colourful characters and mouthwatering global street food. The only minor irritant was the large congregation of ‘Jesus freaks out on the street, handing tickets out for God’, as famously sung by that other great British queen, Elton John, in ‘Tiny Dancer’. But I guess these modern-day evangelical ‘monks’ are only keeping the holy vibe alive. After all, that’s how it all began.
Perking the Pansies 