Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587)
Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at nearby Fotheringhay in 1587 and given a magnificent royal funeral at Peterborough Cathedral, where she remained buried for 25 years.
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Hereward the Wake: Peterborough’s Rebel, Raider and Legend
Hereward the Wake is remembered as one of England’s great rebels, but Peterborough knew another side of him. Discover the real history, the 1070 raid on the abbey, the folklore that followed, Charles Kingsley’s Victorian reinvention and David Pinner’s 1974 Key Theatre play.
William Le Queux (1864-1927)
William Tufnell Le Queux (1864–1927) was one of the most extraordinary literary figures ever to make his home in the Peterborough area.
Peterborough’s dark gift to cinema
Two Peterborough-born creatives helped shape two of cinema’s most unforgettable films. Discover how David Pinner inspired The Wicker Man and Adrian Lyne directed the Oscar-nominated thriller Fatal Attraction.
Aston Merrygold
Five UK number ones, two BRIT Awards and more than ten million records sold. The story starts with a Bretton schoolboy who wanted to play football, and a Saturday night impression of Michael Jackson.
Luke Pasqualino
From a school drama club in Walton to Apple TV, Netflix and the BBC, Luke Pasqualino has spent almost twenty years as one of the most recognisable faces to come out of Peterborough.
Rene Matić
Born in Peterborough in 1997, Rene Matić is an internationally recognised artist, photographer, writer and poet whose work examines contemporary Britain through intimate images of family, friendship, subculture, faith and queer life.
Michael Stonebank
Michael Stonebank, known professionally as Stonebank, is a Peterborough-born DJ, songwriter and electronic music producer. Best known for his long association with the Canadian record label Monstercat, he has built an international following through high-energy releases spanning UK hardcore, electro house, drum and bass, dubstep, hardstyle and melodic electronic music.
Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake was one of the most celebrated English rebels of the 11th century. From the waterways and marshes of the Fens, he resisted the rule of William the Conqueror during the unsettled years following the Norman Conquest.
Hugh Candidus (c. 1095 – c. 1160)
The monk who wrote Peterborough Abbey’s history and gave us the phrase “the golden borough”. Hugh Candidus, his chronicle, and how the text survived.
Charles A Hall (1872-1965)
Long before nature writing became a publishing category, a minister from Eastfield was teaching Edwardian Britain how to look at a pond.
Richard V. Reeves
Peterborough-born writer and social scientist Richard V. Reeves has built an international career examining social mobility, class, family life and the changing circumstances of boys and men.
David Pinner (1940–2025)
The man who wrote the novel behind The Wicker Man was born in Peterborough, and came back to write a play about Hereward the Wake.
Benjamin Dean
Peterborough has produced its share of writers, but few have travelled as quickly from local comprehensive to national bookshelf as Benjamin Dean.
Body snatchers, subways and concrete: the lost burial ground at the bottom of Cowgate
For nearly fifty years, the quickest walk from Peterborough station into the city centre ran through a pair of concrete subways beneath the Queensgate roundabout. They closed for good on Monday 6 July 2026. Most of the people who used them over the decades had no idea...
Sugar Cupping at East Well
There was a spring in Helpston called East Well, and it was said never to run dry. Its water was reckoned particularly good for sore eyes, and there were old stone troughs at the head of it, cut about with crosses and with people's initials. On Whit Sunday the young...
St Pega of Peakirk
Peakirk takes its name from a woman, which is rare, and she is worth knowing. Pega was the sister of St Guthlac, the hermit of Crowland. She is supposed to have founded a monastery here in the eighth century, and locally she was known simply as St Pee. When Guthlac...
Drumming Up the Dead
When somebody drowned in the Nene and the body would not come up, there was a way of finding it, and it was still being used in the 1850s. You took a loaf of bread, and you put quicksilver inside it. Then you set the loaf on the water and let it go. It would drift...
The Hare in the Minster Close
Hares used to come in off the fields to graze the good grass of the Minster Close, and Peterborough did not care for it. The rhyme was clear enough: if a hare makes its form in the Minster Close, there will be a fire in the town before the week is out. Some time in...
The Finger Holes in the Hedda Stone
Behind the high altar of the Cathedral stands a carved block of stone older than almost anything else in the building. It was set up in the ruins of the first monastery after the Danes destroyed it in 869, as a memorial over the monks who were buried there. It also...
Come, Devil, and Blow on the Fire
The devil promised Peterborough Abbey three disasters, and then took his time. In 1041 a Peterborough monk called Aethelric was made bishop of Durham. Pulling down an old church at Chester-le-Street, he came upon a great hoard of treasure, and he sent much of it home...
Simon Magus at the West Door
Walk into the Cathedral through the west front and look down at the base of the central column. The stone is dark, and what is carved on it is not comfortable. A man is upside down. Four demons have hold of him, one on each limb, and they are pulling. Between them...
The Garton End Ghost
This one is recent enough that you can read the witness statements. In the spring of 1926, people began seeing a short figure in a black hood on the lane between Dogsthorpe and Garton End, the road we now call Elmfield Road. Older residents and children stopped going...
St Mark’s Eve in Paston Churchyard
There was an old belief that on St Mark's Eve, the night of 24 April, you could sit up in the churchyard and see who was going to be married and who was going to be buried in the coming year. Watchers went out on purpose to do it. The woman in this story did not. She...