Peterborough
in Objects

More than 5,000 years ago, Neolithic communities at Fengate made richly decorated pottery whose discovery would eventually give an entire British archaeological tradition its name: Peterborough Ware.

Built for British Railways in 1954 and saved from scrap in 1968, steam locomotive 73050 became City of Peterborough and helped inspire the preservation movement that created the Nene Valley Railway.

Carved from cowbone by an unidentified prisoner at Norman Cross, this extraordinary working model of a guillotine combines miniature engineering, intricate craftsmanship and the remarkable prison economy that developed just outside Peterborough during the Napoleonic Wars.

Begun at Peterborough Abbey in the 12th century, the Black Book of Peterborough preserved the monastery’s lands, rights and memory, along with an extraordinary near-contemporary text of Magna Carta.

Found beside Ermine Street at Durobrivae in 1913, this Roman milestone bears the name of Victorinus, ruler of the breakaway Gallic Empire that controlled Britain during the turbulent third century.

Pressed from the remarkable Oxford Clay beneath Fletton, London Brick Company’s Phorpres brick helped transform Peterborough into one of Britain’s great brickmaking centres and became part of millions of homes across the country.

Published in 1970, the Greater Peterborough Master Plan turned New Town ambition into a blueprint for modern Peterborough, shaping the townships, Parkways, green spaces, employment areas and city centre we still know today.

Discovered beneath the Fenland mud at Must Farm, this exceptionally complete Bronze Age wooden wheel reveals sophisticated woodworking, wheeled transport and a community connected far beyond its watery settlement.

Lions, elephants, dragons, unicorns and the unforgettable bonnacon fill the Peterborough Bestiary, a spectacular medieval manuscript in which every creature could become a lesson about faith, morality and the meaning of creation.

Written at Peterborough Abbey in the 12th century, the Peterborough Chronicle records medieval England while capturing the English language changing from Old English towards Middle English.

Written in shimmering gold and blue around 1300, the Peterborough Psalter left Peterborough Abbey in 1318 and passed through the hands of popes, queens, kings and dukes before reaching Brussels.

Standing at the gate of RAF Wittering, Harrier GR7A ZD469 is a combat veteran and a powerful reminder of the more than forty years in which the station was known around the world as the Home of the Harrier.

A fragment of Roman kitchenware preserves one of Peterborough’s most remarkable signatures: Sennianus, a potter who wrote his name and the name Durobrivae on a mortarium nearly 1,800 years ago.

Discovered at Roman Durobrivae near Peterborough in 1975, the Water Newton Treasure is an extraordinary hoard of Christian silver that reveals a wealthy community worshipping beside the River Nene around 1,700 years ago.

Each January, just six miles east of Peterborough, a person disappears beneath a suit of straw and becomes the Whittlesea Straw Bear. Rooted in Fenland Plough Monday traditions, lost in the early 20th century and revived in 1980, the Bear survives because each generation chooses to make it again.