Easter Revels

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The Stamford Mercury tells us that there were, on Good Friday and Easter Monday, various entertainments provided for the public to suit the respective tastes of the Peterborians, neighbours and visitors. I wondered what these may have been and tried to investigate. Well, on this day - Good Friday - in Peterborough town, the recreation ground was well filled while 'various sports were indulged in'. What these 'various sports' were is not recorded so I'll let your imagination bring these to life. There were also several large tea parties, one of which was held at the Grand Hotel in Wentworth Street - a significant establishment then vying for central Peterborough ascendancy with the Angel just round the corner - while another was at the Drill Hall. One I would like to have attended was the 'monster' tea party at New England. I'm not too sure, though, that I would have liked to have rounded off the day sitting through the lecture by Mr George Goodwin, which was 'remarkably well delivered and much appreciated, there being a fashionable platform and a very good audience in the body of the room'. The Mercury tells of the platform and the audience, but nothing about the lecture. Perhaps the journalist went to sleep!

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

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Sennianus Fired a Mortarium

175-199

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A fabulous fragment of Roman pottery was discovered in Water Newton. It is a piece of a mortarium, which is kitchen ware used for grinding and pounding food. This piece is remarkable because of the painted text near the rim of the pottery.

The text was likely to have been painted by the potter who made the pot. His name was Sennianus and he lived in Durobrivae. We know this because he painted 'Sennianus Durobrivis Urit', which is Latin for 'Sennianus of Durobrivae fired this.' This is a very valuable piece of pottery because there are very few references to the name Durobrivae. This is the only British example of the name Sennianus, but a German funerary stela also bares the name. The stone object was discovered in Cologne in 1650, is mid third century, and can be seen in the link provided.

The height of the pottery making industry at Durobriave was in the late 2nd century (175-199AD). Pottery created around Durobrivae is known as Nene Valley Ware. The most common type of Nene Valley Ware is colour-coated ware, which has distinctive white decoration on a black coloured pot. However, the mortarium that Sennianus created was a light brown colour. It was designed to be used in the kitchen, so did not require elaborate decoration.