Peterborough Cathedral: early memorials and a late medieval house discovered

Like many precincts, that at Peterborough Cathedral is subdivided into many different areas, and numerous ancient boundary walls survive, albeit repaired or rebuilt on several occasions – a process that continues today. Major repairs to one of these walls, ‘Wall 29’, on the south side of the deanery courtyard and on the north side of the cathedral cemetery, with the deanery gateway at one end and the deanery house at the other (Fig 1), took place in early 2008. They were accompanied by an archaeological watching brief and related research that led to several important discoveries. Wall 29 was found to have been (re)built in the mid-17th century but the discovery of greatest significance was a collection of fragments from 11 grave covers and upright markers, broadly speaking minor monuments of 11th- and early 12th-century date. It is argued here, with the aid of strong documentary evidence, that they were associated with the knights of Peterborough Abbey. A further discovery was the remnants of a modestly sized but high quality late medieval house which might have stood in the cemetery. This, the gravestones, and the wall itself are linked to the history of lay burial in Peterborough, the development of the abbey’s lay cemetery and to the related development of the deanery on the north side of that cemetery.