Up in Smoke

30/03/1886

Information

The City and Volunteer fire brigades attended a huge fire at English’s timber yards. They could do little to stop a blaze that destroyed three saw mills, the engine and boiler house, three timber sheds; four cranes; eleven railway trucks and a multitude of other machinery and stock pieces across the near 2-acre site. The cost of the damage was estimated to be around £20,000 - a significant sum in 1886. (Mellows, W.T., ‘Peterborough Municipal Jubilee’, Peterborough Standard, 1924)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

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Fletton Church Fascinations

c.800

Information

St Margaret's Church in Fletton was identified in the Domesday Book of 1086, but some of its features are considerably older. Safely protected inside the church are Anglo-Saxon carvings, presumed to be 8th or 9th Century, consisting of a frieze and two separate figures. The frieze contains images of saints, angels and mythical beasts, set amongst typical Anglo-Saxon woven designs. The images are thought to be of St. Michael and an Evangelist. All of the stonework is a light pink colour suggesting that it was once in a fire. One theory is that they had been moved from Peterborough Abbey during the great fire of 1116.

Another feature of the church is a large cross in the churchyard which may have Anglo-Saxon origins. The cross has had several additions and alterations and contains a rather peculiar Latin inscription at its base.