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.
Ethel Granger held the record for the smallest waist ever recorded, measured at 13 inches in Peterborough in 1939. A corsetier, motorcyclist and true original.
Robert “Old Scarlett” was Peterborough’s long-serving Tudor sexton, remembered for tending the city’s dead and helping to inter Katharine of Aragon and Mary, Queen of Scots. The two royal burials took place 51 years apart, making his life an extraordinary human thread running through one of the most turbulent centuries in English history.
Walter Cornelius was Peterborough’s strongman, swimming teacher, charity daredevil and unforgettable “Birdman”. Behind the homemade wings and impossible-looking feats was a Latvian refugee whose extraordinary journey carried him through occupation and war before he found a permanent home beside the River Nene.
A Spanish princess, Queen of England, diplomat, regent and mother of Mary I, Catherine of Aragon became one of the defining figures of Tudor history. Her burial at Peterborough in 1536 gave the city an enduring connection with a queen whose struggle changed England.