Peterborough Cathedral (Part One)

Text and illustrations from Wikipedia -the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise attributed.

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

(Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew)

Photo taken March 2010 by NotFromUtrecht

Peterborough Cathedral, properly the Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew – also known as Saint Peter's Cathedral in the United Kingdom – is the seat of the Bishop of Peterborough, dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, whose statues look down from the three high gables of the famousWest Front.

Founded in the Anglo-Saxon period, the architecture is mainly Norman, following a re-building in the 

12th-Century. With Durham Cathedral and Ely Cathedral, it is one of the most important 12th-Century buildings in England to have remained largely intact, despite extensions and restoration.

Peterborough Cathedral is known for its imposing Early English Gothic West Front (façade) which, with its three enormous arches, is without architectural precedent and with no direct successor. The appearance is slightly asymmetrical, as one of the two towers that rise from behind the façade was never completed, but this is only visible from a distance, while the effect of the West Front upon entering the Cathedral Close is overwhelming.

Peterborough Cathedral - fan vaulting in the "new building".

Author: Steve Cadman from London, U.K. 

Taken July 2008.

(Wikimedia Commons) 

Anglo-Saxon origins

The original Church, known simply as "Medeshamstede", was founded in the reign of the Anglo-Saxon King Peada of the Middle Angles, in about 655 A.D., as one of the first centres of Christianity in Central England. The monastic settlement, with which the Church was associated, lasted at least until 870 A.D., when it was supposedly destroyed by Vikings.

In the mid-10th-Century monastic revival (in which, Churches at Ely and Ramsey were also re-founded), a Benedictine Abbey was created and endowed in 966 A.D., principally by Athelwold, Bishop of Winchester, from what remained of the earlier Church, with "a Basilica [Church] there furbished with suitable structures of halls, and enriched with surrounding lands" and more extensive buildings which saw the Aisle built out to the West, with a second Tower added.

The original Central Tower was, however, retained. It was dedicated to St Peter, and came to be called a burgh, hence the town, surrounding the Abbey, was eventually named Peter-burgh. The community was further revived in 972 A.D. by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.

PART TWO FOLLOWS