• Home
• Community information
• About Peterborough
• Historical Peterborough
• The landscape is formed
• Our first people
• Farmers and potters
• Monuments and mysteries
• Pre-history gives way to the Romans
• The Romans make their mark
• Settlers and saints
• A medieval new town
• From abbey to cathedral, from town to city
• Civil war and a return to peace
• Prosperity and puddles
• A tribute to a rural tradition
• The railway age
• A modern city emerges
• A century of changes

Please note: Translations are handled by an external website and are not endorsed by Peterborough City Council.

Settlers and saints

The Anglo-Saxon way of life in the Peterborough area was very different to that of the Romano-British. The great pottery industries that flourished along the Nene valley in the 4th century AD were abandoned in the 5th century. The town of Durobrivae was not maintained, and gradually was forgotten. The grand Roman buildings at Castor, and countless villas in the surrounding countryside, were left to fall down, or were robbed for their stone. The shells or sites of some of these Roman buildings, however, were re-occupied by Anglo-Saxon families or continued to be occupied by the native families, albeit eventually in the Anglo-Saxon fashion.

Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon settlements generally comprised small clusters of timber houses, rather than substantial villages. Such settlements have been excavated at Woodston, Orton Longueville and Maxey. Evidence of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship can be seen in the spectacular artefacts found in cemeteries, such as those excavated at Woodston, Gunthorpe and Alwalton. The Peterborough area lay on the boundary of two great Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercia, to the west, and East Anglia. The abbey at Peterborough was founded by Mercian royalty during the second half of the 7th century and came to acquire large amounts of land. With the abbey came also the beginnings of the settlement that would eventually grow to become the medieval town.

The settlement at Peterborough was originally named Medeshamstede. It was renamed 'Burh' in the late 10th century after it was enclosed by a wall and ditch. 'Burh' was an Anglo-Saxon term applied to fortified places. Later on it became known as 'Burh St Peter', from which was derived the present-day name 'Peterborough'.

William the Conqueror's armies were frustrated by rebellion in the fens long after much of England had been subdued. Hereward the Wake, who became the most famous of the English resistance leaders, fought a guerrilla war against the Normans in the fens. Anticipating the arrival of Peterborough's new Norman abbot and his soldiers, a Danish fleet, with Hereward's support, attacked the burh and looted the abbey's treasures.