The Plague Arrives in Peterborough

This is the longer ramble of a shorter post on the Peterborough Women’s History Group blog here, which focussed on women during the plague. This post is where I delve into more of the wider context of the plague in Peterborough and consider where the pesthouse once was. Huge thanks must go to Gail Richardson (no relation) at Peterborough Archives who first pointed out the fascinating church accounts detailing every victim of the deadly virus and suggested I should investigate it.

The plague arrived in Peterborough in September 1665. The bringer of the great pestilence was a woman. She was a stranger who had travelled up from London and died in September 1665. It seems very likely that the woman who cared for this sick stranger in her final hours was Katherine Hambleton, for she was the first victim in Peterborough. All we know about her was that she was the wife of Cornelius Hambleton and that after her death a small cross was marked against her name in St John’s church register, a cross that would be scratched hundreds of times over the next couple of years.

OS Map of Newark, Near Peterborough, 1889

Interestingly, the plague didn’t first appear in the centre of town, where you might expect a weary traveller to arrive at an inn, but just north of the town. Although no location was given to the burial location of the unnamed woman, or indeed Mistress Hambleton, the disease spread to the woadgrounds and then on to Newark (the name is preserved in Newark Hill School). The woadgrounds was an area where people were growing woad plants to extract the vivid blue dye from them. (For more information see my earlier post 'Woad You Believe It'). It was smelly, dirty, backbreaking work and it’s possible that the woman had arrived to offer much needed support at harvest or processing time and was a temporary part of their small community. Alternatively, she was taken in by the transient community who were likely ostracised from the town due to the processing of woad, but who were happy to help a woman in need.

It should be no surprise that it was mainly women and children who died first. The key to these deaths, and to so many more, is that women provided (and still provide) the lion’s share of all caring work, be it tending to the sick, the elderly, or indeed their own children. The proximity of care and physical touch was what led to a higher rate of women dying than men: 58% or 266 of the recorded burials were women.

The Dance of Death

Another interesting factor, and part of the wider context of this outbreak of the plague, is that many people had died during the Civil Wars and in considerable numbers after them. We naturally think of the soldiers who were killed in combat, but war is more than the battles won and lost; the whole country was weakened by the events of war. Families found themselves in poverty, former soldiers were traumatised or injured: this was a particularly bad time for the plague to arrive.

There aren’t any specific figures for the number of Peterborough men who died in warfare during that period, but it is likely that a diminished male population contributed to the gender differences in the reported deaths with only 42% or 194 of the plague burials of males in the city. These figures are not large – Peterborough was a small market town in the 17^th century – but when we consider that the total population of the city was roughly 2,000 people then the female deaths alone represented around 13% of the population. Combined with the males, this gives a figure of 23% which is similar to the death rate elsewhere in the country.[1]

In addition to this, those with money, other properties, or family were able to move out of the city to nearby villages, country manors and safer towns. Peterborough Feoffees’ account books, which ran through the 17^th century, were notably blank during the plague. The feoffees were the cream of society, the men trusted to make important decisions on welfare and town improvements, but they did not remain in the city. None of them were on the list of the dead. None of their families were on the list of the dead.

However, the Feoffees had made an important decision in 1642 by agreeing to create a pesthouse in the city. Deadly infectious diseases were common until vaccinations were created, so a pesthouse – a building where those with infectious diseases could be isolated and cared for – was always going to be a sensible addition to any town or city. There are clues in the Feoffees’ accounts that tell us where it might have been. In 1646 a reference to the pesthouse was recorded when Widdow Tinkerson rented ‘two closes neare the Pesthouse in Westgate and a cottage’ and later to a ‘Pesthouse close’ situated at ‘Peterborough Westfield’ in 1683, approximately 13 years after it had been dismantled.[2] This doesn’t give us an exact location for the house, but a quick view of John Speed’s 1610 map of Peterborough does show us that Westgate finished roughly where Lincoln Road starts now, with fields and only a couple of cottages further west. 

A map of Peterborough is at the bottom right of John Speed's larger map - zoom in if you can

This is interestingly in the vicinity of medieval St Leonard’s Leper Hospital, which was located close to the eastern side of what is now Midland Road. Westgate used to continue west (hence its name) from the city, and is likely to have passed through what is now Rathbone Crescent and/or Granary Close, to the east of Midland Road, which is where an archaeological dig was carried out in advance of the house build in 2014.[3] The dig did not reveal St Leonard’s Hospital but it did reveal a mass grave with skeletons from several time periods, sadly none from the 17^th century. It’s believed that St Leonard’s was no longer used after the dissolution, but there were other suggestions that the site – or a nearby site – became used as a pesthouse. This means the gravesite of the plague victims is likely to be close to the location of the leprosy victims and could potentially be sitting under houses, industrial buildings, or even the East Coast Mainline…

Westgate travels from right on left on the picture and would have crossed Midland Road on the left of the picture

The last woman to die from the plague in Peterborough was Alice Hall, who was buried on 28^th April 1667. Unusually, nothing much is known about her either – the fatigue of the pandemic had no doubt taken its toll. Most women were described by the man they were related to – daughter of, wife of, widow of – but Alice had no such attribution. Following the wars there was a rise in the number of independent women, for there was never going to be enough men to make wives of them all. And of the single men who had returned from war, a widow, perhaps with wealth inherited from her husband and a proven record of child rearing was a better prospect. So there were more single women, too old to still belong to their fathers, but never married.

Sadly, it was not declared where Alice had been buried either. The grounds of the pesthouse, where hundreds of the deceased had been buried, was undoubtedly full, but without the detail of a burial in her own grounds, it is likely that the pest house was her resting place. As an unattributed woman she is less likely to have been buried by family, and even less likely to have been buried on family land, particularly because there are no other Halls in the records.

The last person to die from the plague in Peterborough was a child, a little boy named Roger Whittington. He was the son of Roger Whittington and was buried in an undisclosed location on 9 May 1667.

In a final note, it is worth adding that there was a surge of weddings and baptisms once the plague appeared to be over. After years of fear, the people of Peterborough wanted to celebrate their unions and new arrivals in the sight of God and what remained of their congregation. The human desire to enjoy the good and find hope descends through all generations.

If you want to look at the St John’s church records, then Ancestry.co.uk is the best place to look. You can do so for free on a computer in Peterborough Archives, where you will find the Feoffees Accounts, old maps, and microfilm of church records. If you’re looking for more local church registers with evidence of the plague, good places to explore are Oundle and St Martin’s, Stamford Baron. 

Images:

OS Map of Newark printed in 1889 from maps.nls.uk

Dance of Death by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

John Speed’s Map from Wiki Commons

OS Map of Westgate, Peterborough from maps.nls.uk

[1] The vast majority of statistical data from the time period is based on estimates and extrapolations. London statistics are the most frequently shared, but even they are open to interpretation. A population loss of 23% is certainly at the higher end of supposed population loss and could suggest that the population of Peterborough was in fact higher than 2,000, but it could mean that the city was hit hard and in a particularly weakened state. There is a good chance that the recorded number of people who died in Peterborough from the plague was incorrect, as people buried their family privately or they were missed from the records in times of overwhelming stress. We should also consider that there are no deaths of infants or the elderly that we would expect to see in the records, so there will have been other deaths/burials unrecorded, in addition to the plague deaths.

[2] As an aside, the wood from the pesthouse was kept for some time in the belfry of St John’s after the building had been dismantled, presumably to be used again elsewhere. This, and other facts, are from the Feoffees Accounts.

[3] https://peterborougharchaeology.org/st-leonards-leper-hospital/

The Oldest Buildings in Peterborough: Part One

Updated. This blogpost started with the destruction of a tree in Peterborough. A 600-year-old oak that would have been part of the ancient woodland of Grimeshaw Wood was chopped down by the council due to a perceived cost of repairing modern houses built too close to the tree. In short, it was cheaper to cut down a 600-year-old habitat than fix a modern house, so the tree had to go.

I was horrified by the decision and knew that should this have been a historic building, the scene would have looked very different indeed. I knew that St John’s church in the middle of Peterborough was built in 1402 and was therefore a similar age. In contrast to the tree being removed, the church benefitted from recent improvements to increase its visibility and the addition of green spaces (there were trees in planters, but they weren’t replaced when they died); the church is also grade I listed. To so carefully  curate a space around an old building is of course a wonderful thing, but to treat a living item of the same age as an annoyance and see only the expense in potential damage (when the church must cost a lot of money to maintain every year) is short-sighted at the very least. The sooner we can apply similar listed status to trees – the current tree protection orders are no better than the paper they’re written on – and respect them with the same integrity we do buildings, the better.

This led me to wonder what other buildings are the same age as the oak and how it fitted into the history of the area, so I set about making a list of the ages of local buildings. I realised very early on that for the task to be manageable I would need to reduce the date parameters for the task, so all of the buildings included in the list are pre-1700. This date ensures that only the oldest buildings are included, and they should (should!) be listed.

One of the issues with creating a list of buildings by date is that many of the buildings are mixtures of dates, having been rebuilt, added to, or adjusted. I therefore had to decide whether the building be dated based on one feature retained in it, or a significant amount of the structure? For example, St Augustine’s Church in Woodston features a Saxon wall and window with a handful of medieval features, but is largely a Victorian rebuild – should that be included?

I decided that for the building to be included it would need to contain a substantial structural element from before 1700. This could be part of the building e.g. a chancel or a hidden core and I would take my lead from the building’s listing. Some of the building dates are therefore supplemented with probably or possibly. That said, I expect the list to change as further information is gained. Buildings can move up or down the list as they are inspected, dendrodated, or researched; some might move onto it and some might fall off it. One of these buildings is Peterborough Museum. The building appears to be Georgian (pre-1816) but the core of the building is potentially older and some of the features in the cellar appear to be medieval. For now, I am leaving it out of the listing, with the understanding that if research, dendro, etc reveals otherwise, then I’ll add it in.

It is absolutely no surprise to anyone that the oldest buildings in the area are churches and ecclesiastic buildings. Centuries of devotion (and money) have ensured their survival and their listed status should (hopefully) support their continued survival. For ease, I have separated out religious and domestic buildings into two lists and this post will focus on religious buildings. The list revealed something I hadn’t appreciated before: the oldest and youngest churches (pre-1700) are both St John the Baptist! Location is key here; the oldest is St John’s Barnack and the youngest is St John’s Peterborough. Saxon elements are an integral part of the structure of St John’s Barnack, which also feature in second place All Saints’ Wittering. Third in the list is St Mary Wansford and fourth is St Mary and St Botolph in Thorney; all four have been used for worship for over a thousand years, which is quite incredible.

Peterborough Cathedral has ended up in 8th place behind three churches built in the Norman period. It is likely that this is the wrong location given that there were ten churches built in the Norman period or 12th century, and it doesn't take into account the first Saxon church on the cathedral site. Further research may help to narrow down the building dates of the churches and I expect the placing of these churches to change. Having a list of buildings means that conversations can be had, and experts can add their voices. It might also encourage people to go out and visit the churches to see what they can discover, for some of them contain research by locals in guidebooks and noticeboards inside the buildings (as well as the fascinating architecture) and that information can help guide the list too.

I’m going to write another blog on the domestic buildings because this is very long, so here’s the list of churches.

Church                                            Location                                        Date

St John the Baptist	Barnack	Saxon 1020
All Saints	Wittering	Saxon (and 12-14th)
St Mary	Wansford	Early Norman
St Mary and St Botolph	Thorney	1085-1108 (1638)
St Botolph	Helpston	Norman
St Kyneburgha	Castor	Norman
St Peter	Maxey	Norman
Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul, and St Andrew	Peterborough	1118
St John	Stanground	1150 (and 1300)
St John	Upton	12th (17th)
St Michael	Sutton	12th (15th and 19th)
St Benedict	Glinton	12th
St Pega	Peakirk	12th
St Mary	Marholm	12th and 13th
St Andrew	Northborough	Late 12th /early 13th
St John	Werrington	12th/13th
All Saints	Paston	1220
St Botolph	Longthorpe	1250
St Stephen	Etton	13th
Holy Trinity	Orton Longueville	1275
St Mary	Ufford	Late 13th
St Mary	Orton Wistow	Late 13th
St Margaret	Fletton	1300
St John the Baptist	Peterborough	1402

Note* most of these churches have a range of additions and alterations and straddle many time periods

Update. Having visited St John's Barnack, information inside the church states it dates from 1020. This doesn't change its position as the oldest building in the Peterborough area but it does provide a crucial date that can be compared to other buildings. An upcoming visit to All Saints Wittering may yet change that top position...