Our Journey presents stories from the Big Bang to the present day in a digital format for everyone to enjoy both during this very special year and beyond.
Public
As residents and visitors, we invite you to explore a showcase of the most interesting, poignant, bizarre, hilarious and impactful stories of the past, as well as submitting your own stories, past and present, to add to the ever changing and colourful fabric which is the story of the city.
You can join in by creating you own ‘Our Journey’ account from August 2018, to submit stories to be published online as well as create your own custom timeline.
Schools
For schools, we are launching a comprehensive, digital place-based curriculum. This has been developed through significant consultations and workshops with historians, curriculum specialists, and teachers from across the city.
From September 2018 we invite our schools to explore and discover the city’s past through images, poetry, music, text and film extracts that have been hand-picked by our teams to accompany this completely unique suite of local resources which celebrates Peterborough’s heritage whilst supporting almost all areas of the national curriculum.
John Mordaunt was the first Earl of Peterborough. His beginnings were not auspicious as his father was incarcerated in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. He died in 1608 when John was 11. John was taken from his Catholic family and was made a ward of Protestant Bishop of London, George Abbot. Abbot believed the best way of dissuading him from following the same path as his father was by a good education; he was therefore educated at Oxford.
After completing his education Mordaunt was invited to court, where he was a great success. Charles I created him Earl of Peterborough, by letters patent of 9 March 1628.
During the English Civil War he deserted the king and fought on the side of Parliament. When he died on 8 June 1642 his son Henry, 2nd Earl of Peterborough defected back to the Royalists.
John Mordaunt had the drama 'Tis Pity She's a Whore' dedicated to him by the playright John Foot.
The earldom died out when the 5th Earl, Charles Henry Mordaunt died, childless, on 16th June 1814.