A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



was held at Langdike, at the meeting place of the parishes of Ufford, Help- 

 ston and Upton, where a bush bearing that name still stands. 



The magistrates for the soke of Peterborough hold not only commis- 

 sions of the peace, but those of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery, and His 

 Majesty's justices of assize have no criminal jurisdiction in the soke, though 

 capital offences are sent to them under a special Act of Parliament. The 

 soke is a separate administrative county under the Local Government Act of 

 1888, which preserves its ancient administrative autonomy. 



THE BOROUGH OF PETERBOROUGH 



Burgh (1000 A.D.), Burch, Burg, Burgus Sancti 

 Petri, Burgensis Abbatia (1100). 



Peterborough is situated on an edge of limestone 

 swept by a sea of fen upon its eastern, and by the 

 River Nene upon its southern shores. It was (so far 

 as we know) the only one of the five great fen 

 monasteries whose dependent town was made a 

 borough. Lying a few miles east of the Ermine 

 Street, it was not early marked out as a trading 

 centre save by its facilities for river communication 

 and its position as an inland port for the fen. From 

 early times its hythe was a place of call, and the 

 Nene still offers means of water communication to 

 Northampton and the Grand Junction Canal towards 

 the inland ; and enlarged as the New River, to 

 Wisbech and King's Lynn towards the sea. But 

 at the present time it is as the junction of four 

 great railway lines, the Great Northern, London and 

 North- Western, Midland, and Great Eastern, that the 

 town has become a commercial centre of importance. 

 In the north part of the city two ' railway villages ' 

 have been peopled by the railway workers of the 

 Great Northern and the Midland ; the one known as 

 New England, the other Spittal, for it is on the site 

 of St. Leonard's Hospital. There are 325 J acres of 

 arable land and 270J acres of pasture in Peter- 

 borough.' 



The plan of the urban nucleus is and was fi-om 

 early time irregular. The original town was on the 

 north bank of the river, and from the river-hythe a 

 main street ran as it now runs northward, sending 

 out branches to the west ; on the eastern side lies 

 the cathedral precinct. Opposite the west front of 

 the cathedral this main street widens out into a large 

 market-place, in which the parish church of St. John 

 the Baptist has stood since the early 15 th century. 

 The borough has now spread to the southern side of 

 the river into Huntingdonshire. The station of the 

 Great Eastern Railway is on the south bank, and in 

 1888 the municipal borough was extended to include 

 the whole of Woodstone and Fletton, two villages in 

 Huntingdonshire south of the Nene bridge. 



The original name of Peterborough, Medesham- 

 stede, points to the existence of a village settlement 

 in early Saxon times before the creation of the 

 monastery in 655, and the territory attaching to 

 this settlement may possibly have been coterminous 

 with the boundaries of St. John's parish before it was 

 divided in 1857. Some of the evidence, however, 



would suggest that Longthorpe and its area were not 

 originally included in the boundaries of the first set- 

 tlement but were subsequently absorbed. It is notice- 

 able that Domesday Book treats ' Thorpe ' apart from 

 ' Burg,' though the hidage of the (Danish) settlement 

 of Thorpe must be added to that of Burg in the 

 general scheme of the hidage of the hundreds. 

 Further, Longthorpe did not common with Peter- 

 borough and its hamlets, Dogsthorpe, Newark, and 

 Eastfield in the Little Borough Fen.' It seems then 

 that these three hamlets began as colonies or granges 

 upon the Medeshamstede fields, and that Longthorpe 

 should not be regarded as forming, from the first, 

 part of the arable area covered by that settlement. 

 That that arable area was originally laid out in two 

 great divisions or fields may be suspected from the 

 fact that the East and West Fields can still be identi- 

 fied, lying east and west of the cathedral. The 

 southern boundary of the East Field w.is the Carr 

 Dyke ; beyond it there stretched the fen and the 

 waters against which it was a protection. Mill Field 

 was a division of the West Field, the Boon Fields a 

 division of the East Field. The Boon Fields should 

 rather be called Bondfields ; to them led the Bond- 

 gate, later Bungate, now City Road, and here lay 

 the arable strips of the bondsmen of the abbey 

 whose tenure is commemorated in the field name. 



The ' burgesses ' of Peterborough are first men- 

 tioned in the survey of the abbey's possessions made 

 soon after 14 October, 1 125,' and in all likelihood 

 the village attached to the monastery of St. Peter 

 had not then long been equipped with the legal 

 attribute of a borough, a Portmanmoot or borough 

 court with powers equivalent to those of a hundred 

 court. There is nothing to urge in favour of a 

 Saxon origin for the borough beyond the statement 

 of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ' that the Abbot Kenulf, 

 992—1005, made a wall about the minster, and 

 changed the name Medeshamstede to Burgh, and the 

 cause of this change of name William of Malmes- 

 bury (writing when the town had undoubtedly 

 become a borough) explicitly ascribes to the building 

 of the wall.* But it does not follow from this that 

 the town acquired the legal attributes of a borough 

 in the loth century ; the monastery had become 

 ' like a city,' a strong place, a burgh, and hence the 

 change of name ; indeed, that the villagers had not 

 acquired a borough court in 1086 seems clear from 

 the evidence of Domesday Book. There Peter- 



' The estimates for pasture and arable 

 land in each parish are taken from infor- 

 mation supplied by the Board of Agricul- 

 ture from the return of 1905. 



' Bridges, Northant!, ii, 539, 



8 The survey from the Liber Niger of 

 Peterborough, No. 60 among the MSS. of 

 the Society of Antiquaries, is printed as 

 an appendix to Stapleton's Ckron, Petro- 

 turg. (Camden Society). The date is 



424 



closely fixed by Hugo Candidus, Hist. Ang. 

 Scrip, variiy ed. Sparlce, 72. 



* Op. cit. 963 E. 



' Gcsi. Pont. ed. Hamilton, 317. 



