Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Peterborough Cathedral

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Mary, Queen of Scots)

    Peterborough Cathedral was, for a short while, privileged to be the burial site of two Queens, Katherine of Aragon and Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was born in 1542 and was rather a threat to Queen Elizabeth since they both have rival claims to the crown. On 8 February 1587 Queen Elizabeth decided that she would have Mary beheaded, whilst she was being held at Fotheringhay Castle.

    From Fotheringhay Castle, Mary was brought to Peterborough Cathedral to be buried, with a grand service being authorised by Queen Elizabeth. There was though some delay with these proceedings, with the body not being brought from Fotheringhay to Peterborough for over five months. It’s also thought that her heart and organs were buried near to where she was executed.

    James I decided to bring his mother’s body to Westminster Abbey in 1612, where her tomb remains to this day. The tomb that he created at Westminster is rather grand to say the least and was designed by William and Cornelius Cure. Peterborough Cathedral was left with just one Queen, which is still more than most cathedrals in the country can offer.

    An information board located near to where the tomb of the Queen was. It’s marked today by Scottish flags which are placed in the nave.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Hedda Stone)

    Peterborough Cathedral is very proud of the Hedda Stone and it is located behind the main altar. It is around 1,250 years old and carved on it are the representations of twelve religious figures, six on each side of the stone.

    Hedda was an early Abbot and he, and around 83 others, were killed by the Danish army. Some books say that this stone was allegedly placed over his burial site in the medieval period, before the stone was later brought into the Cathedral. I’m not exactly sure where his burial site was, so this explanation isn’t entirely convincing to me.

    There are seemingly also two explanations for the holes in the stone, one is that this is where candles are placed, the second reason is that they are slots for carrying poles. There is though more agreement about the figures on the stone, with St. Peter on the right hand side, holding the keys to heaven.

    There seems to be a fair amount of conflicting information about this stone, but the web-site at http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=13023 seems to have the most clarity.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Monks’ Cemetery)

    Tucked away at the east end of Peterborough Cathedral are these stone coffins, which were discovered during Victorian excavations. The coffins were in the monks’ graveyard and it wasn’t known who was buried in them, it could either be monks or those who had made a financial contribution towards the Abbey. It’s thought that the burials date to around the twelfth century, with the stone coffins now looking perhaps a little forlorn in their current location.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (John Chambers Tomb)

    Bishop John Chambers, whose tomb is located in Peterborough Cathedral, was the last Abbot of Peterborough Abbey and the Cathedral’s first Bishop. Chambers was the only person to have been able to maintain his role during the transition between the status of Abbey and Cathedral.

    Chambers seems to have been well connected to have been able to maintain his position, although the King’s decision to build a tomb to Katherine of Aragon in the Abbey is likely to have been a strong influence as well. He had originally been appointed as Abbot in 1528 by Thomas Wolsey and Chambers was sensible enough to sign the Oath of Supremacy in 1535. Chambers was also present in 1538 when Katherine of Aragon was buried in the building and he remained closely connected to senior figures in the Royal court.

    There were another two memorials in the Cathedral to Chambers, although both of these were destroyed when Parliamentarian troops raided the building during the English Civil War. The memorial tomb that does exist also looked heavily worn and damaged, I assume that this damage was again caused during the English Civil War.

    Chambers did financially very well out of the Dissolution arrangements and it could be argued that he sold out his principles to do so. Although, without him selling out it’s possible that Peterborough Cathedral might not exist today.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Edward Bigland Tomb)

    The tomb of Edward Bigland, who died at the age of 50 on 18 May 1760, and is buried at Peterborough Cathedral.

    This is Bigland’s baptism record, not the most beautifully presented and organised of documents, but nonetheless it has survived and it shows he was born on 15 July 1710 and was baptised on 21 July 1710.

    His first wife was Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles Pitfield, and they had no children. I can’t quite work out where and when she died, but an Elizabeth Bigland was buried at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly in 1741. Back then this was in Middlesex, just a short distance away from where her Pitfield family home was in Hoxton.

    Edward Bigland married in 1743 for the second time, to the widow of the antiquary, Dr. White Kennet, who was the son of the Bishop of Peterborough of the same name, and with her Bigland had four children. These were Edward, Mary, Lucy-Eliza and Orme (also known as Anne and Orme was the name of Bigland’s mother).

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (1762 Sundial)

    And another in my series of posts about Peterborough Cathedral, this is the sundial on the western frontage of the building. It is dated 1762 and is painted onto the stonework, with a further three dates of 1914, 1968 and 2009 below it, which is when it was restored. This sundial can only be used to tell the time in the afternoon and early evening, although there are other sundials on other sides of the building.

    When it was repainted in 2009 it had become almost impossible to see because of pollution having faded it away, so I can only imagine that it was effectively impossible to notice during the entire nineteenth century. Unless that is there was some repainting, but they never noted on the wall the date of the restoration. The monks in the cathedral had been using sundials before the reformation, so perhaps this is even older than it appears.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Boulder)

    I’m not sure many people will find this particularly interesting, although I did. It’s a huge lump of stone that was taken out of the north west pier of the cathedral tower when it was reconstructed in the 1880s. The central tower was falling down at that time and since great lumps of stone like this were thirty feet up in the pillar, that’s perhaps not entirely a surprise. Nearly of the stone frontage was put back, but they didn’t replace the inner core. Instead, this lump of stone is now located outside of the cathedral in the graveyard.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Lady Chapel)

    The ghostly traces of the Lady Chapel, which was once attached to Peterborough Cathedral, can still be seen in the stonework where the former roof-line was. It was built in the late thirteenth century and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Abbot William Parys oversaw the construction of the chapel which would later contain numerous tombs.

    Unfortunately the chapel was demolished in 1650 and the money raised was used to pay for repairs to the cathedral following the destruction caused by the Parliamentary troops during the Civil War.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Haydn Keeton)

    This memorial tablet is a little different with its musical score, marking the burial of Haydn Keeton, the cathedral’s former organist. He was born on 26 October 1847 in Sheffield and served as the cathedral’s organist from 1870 until 1921. He died at the age of 73 and during his time in Peterborough he lived at 4 Park Road and on Thorpe Road, doing well enough to have three servants during his time at the latter address.