Was Peterborough Museum Building Built in 1816?

 

The building that Peterborough Museum building sits in is one of the most impressive buildings in Peterborough. Tucked away on Priestgate it might not have the setting that other mansions like Thorpe Hall or Ufford Manor do, but when it was built it was one of the most desirable street to live on in Peterborough.

If you read any information about the history of the building you will know that it was built in 1816. This is never disputed because there is seemingly insurmountable proof in a datestone on the building. You will also know that the building was built by Thomas Alderson Cooke (for it his initials are on the datestone) and completed only months before the tragic death of his beloved wife Judith. I believe most of this is wrong and aim to explain why in this blogpost.

Let’s start with the datestone. Imagine for a moment that you are Thomas Alderson Cooke and have spent a ridiculous amount of money on building a huge mansion – a building that would be a legacy of your brilliance and wealth. Where would you put your datestone? How are people from generations in the future going to know that you were entirely responsible for this expansive mansion? You’d put it where people can see it on the front of the building. Think back to every single datestone you’ve seen on a domestic building, and you will realise that every single one is on the front (or in a very prominent position), where it can be seen and where visitors and passers-by can marvel at your brilliance. So where would you expect to see Thomas’ date stone? Probably not at ground level on the side of the building near the entrance to a cellar, but that’s exactly where it is. In that position the only people who would ever have seen it would be tradesmen calling at the servants’ door or his own staff. Hardly the trumpet call people might think it is.

A clue to the purpose of the datestone, I believe, is evident in the two extensions to the building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both extensions have large explanations about when they were erected and who erected them. You can see another example of this at Miss Pear’s Almshouses (see my other blogpost on that). She donated money in her will to pay for an extension to existing almshouses in her will of 1901, with the extension built in 1903. Most people (including the official Historic England listing) have apparently ignored the 1835 datestone above the original door and the (now horribly disfigured) plaque. Additionally, on the western side of the cathedral gatehouse at the top is the date 1952 but thankfully nobody has attempted to suggest it was built then!

The datestone sits close to the entrance to the cellars and I believe was created to commemorate Thomas Cooke’s renovation of them. We know he was a keen drinker and liked to entertain, so having a large wine cellar, meat store and coal cellar would have been essential. The cellar was once the ground level of an earlier house of possibly medieval origins (based on some architectural features recently identified) and the present vaulted ceilings cut in to those walls and windows. Evidence of a blocked-up entrance to the cellars from inside the house (in an area not open to the public) suggests that this was the original entrance before they were renovated (retrofitted?!), giving further strength to the argument that the new outside entrance was significant enough to warrant dating. The very specific dating of the work (20th July) also suggests it was a smaller job that was completed rather than the building of a house.

The date stone is located behind the tree at the very bottom of the wall and is impossible to see without standing over it.

Next, there was a belief that the building there before Thomas Alderson Cooke supposedly built his one in 1816 was the ancient and decaying Orme house. The Ormes definitely lived in a large house on Priestgate from the early 17th century (not the 16^th) and still owned the house and land at the start of the 19^th century, but the house was far from decaying.

I believe they had rebuilt their house in the 18th century and it had the distinctive T-shape floor plan that largely remains today. Speede’s Map of 1611 shows the older, Orme house on the site, but by 1721 the T-shape of the present building is present on a map (below). The image of the house captured on the Prospect of Peterborough from 1731 appears to agree with the same shape, although the features of the house (roofline and windows) do not match up with the current building. The present building does sit on the footprint of the earlier building, at least at the front, because the cellars roughly match up with the outer walls above. Its distinctive T-shape is without the curved south aspect in the 1721 map (and the Prospect shows no rear end to the building at all!), but it’s very likely that this was a later addition. The thickness of the walls, which can be seen at the  doors to the curved southern rooms, strongly suggests it was originally an external wall. You can also see that the image in the Prospect shows a house made of five bays, which is still what it is now. Following the fire that destroyed the upper floors of the house there is no evidence to show if the five gable-end windows at the top of the building were adapted for a more fashionable style, or if they were from an earlier building. The architectural style of the house does appear to be Palladian and avoids the use of some of the typical Regency features such as stucco that you might expect from a house built in 1816.

                                                   

                                                                The house in 1721

If my suspicions are correct about the building, then it could push back the date of the present museum building by around 100 years and make it even more significant than it already is. What I am still looking for is other evidence to back up my theories; a reference to a newly built house in an Orme will, for example, or an itemisation of building works carried out for Thomas Cooke.

My third point relates to recently discovered documents. I was delighted to meet some of Thomas Alderson Cooke’s descendants a few years ago. They had inherited a raft of items from their family and wanted to share them to gain more understanding of their family history, which luckily, I’d been researching for some time. What I saw provided the best evidence that the Cookes had lived in the present building long before 1816. One document proved a vital link between the Cookes and the Ormes and showed that the Cookes occupied the house in 1811. Why would a very wealthy man live in the decaying ruins of the Orme house? Put simply: he wouldn’t. Cooke was trying to make a name for himself in the city and put himself on an equal footing to the likes of the Squires family, so it was important for him to live in the best house in the city, even if he had to rent it.

Walden Orme had been the Orme heir but he sadly died intestate after falling out of a small boat that he was sailing on a pond in Edith Weston in 1809. There were, of course, some legal wranglings around the Orme estate after his death which continued for several years, resulting, I believe, in the eventual selling of the Priestgate house by the Orme family. Thomas bought it and started to put his own stamp on the property, including renovating the cellars.

Another delight I was able to view was a sketch of the back of the house and part of the garden. It had been drawn in pencil and was signed J Cooke. The signature meant it could only have been drawn by Judith or eldest daughter Julia. Judith died in 1817 and Julia married William Walcot Squire (see other blogpost) in 1818, so if the house was built in 1816, as stated, there’s no more than a two year period in which the picture could have been drawn. What is interesting to note then, is that the curved southern end of the building had a scattering of tall trees close to it, items so close that they would certainly have been felled in order to build a new house.

            A modern view of the curved southern end of the museum building

What is missing here are documents showing exactly when the house was built, or when the cellars were remodelled. There is a document hiding in the museum archives detailing work that was carried out by Johnsons builders for Thomas in 1816. I believe they will show that he carried out work on the cellars, but the documents are hidden in a sea of other documents and are currently unavailable to view.

There is a lot more information I could add about changes to the building over time, a likely re-fronting of the house, the use of different stones to build the house (there’s some beautiful rubble walling at the eastern back of the house that is completely different to the ashlar at the front and may be from an earlier building) and changes to the front of the house using the same stone that was used to build the house next door in 1844 (a story for another day).

I am aware that these points raise as many questions as they solve, but history and historical interpretation changes as new evidence is found. I hope one day to have enough information to tie down exactly when the house was first built and what was altered when. For now, I am suggesting that the 1816 date relates entirely to the remodelling of the cellars and that the house is around 100 years older than has been stated. As and when new information comes to light, I will be happy to add to it, and I'm still open to the idea that I might yet be wrong! My concluding note is to always question date stones; ask what they’re commemorating and why they were placed where they were. Sometimes they’re just for the benefit of the butler!

Image of Peterborough Museum by David P Howard via Geograph and the southern and eastern views by Geographer via Geograph. Image of gatehouse datestone authors own.