The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral, by
George S. Phillips

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Title: The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral

Author: George S. Phillips

Release Date: April 3, 2007 [EBook #20967]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Peterborough Cathedral--West Front]

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

A GUIDE TO PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL;

COMPRISING A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY

FROM ITS FOUNDATION TO THE PRESENT TIME,

WITH A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF ITS ARCHITECTURAL

PECULIARITIES AND RECENT IMPROVEMENTS;

COMPILED FROM THE WORKS OF GUNTON, BRITTON,

AND ORIGINAL & AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS.

BY GEORGE S. PHILLIPS.

[JANUARY SEARLE.]

A New Edition, Revised and Corrected.

PETERBOROUGH:
PUBLISHED BY GEO. C. CASTER, BOOKSELLER, MARKET PLACE.
1881.

PRINTED BY GEO. C. CASTER,
AT HIS PRINTING OFFICE, IN THE "KING'S LODGINGS,"
WITHIN THE MINSTER PRECINCTS, PETERBOROUGH.
1881.

A GUIDE TO PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.

CHAPTER I.

_From the foundation of the monastery by Peada, A.D. 655, to its
destruction by fire in the reign of Henry the First;--embracing a
period of 461 years._

The history of our monastic establishments is but little regarded and
as little known. The obscurity in which all monastic institutions is
involved renders it difficult to give any certain and positive
information respecting the origin of the building to whose history
these pages are devoted; but it appears to have been founded at a very
early period--the churches of Canterbury, Rochester, London, Westminster,
York, and Winchester, being the only large sacred edifices that
preceded it. The date of the first building is stated to have been A.D.
655--fifty-eight years after the introduction of Christianity into
England by St. Augustine; and so large were the foundation stones, that
it required eight yoke of oxen to draw them. From this it may be
inferred that the structure was not, like many of the Anglo-Saxon
churches of this p