PETERBOROUGH. An episcopal city, a Parliamentary and municipal borough, and a ChVIC county, known as the soke or liberty of Peter borough, in Northamptonshire, England, on the Nen. 37 miles northeast of Northampton, and 76 miles north by west of London (Slap: England, F 4). its principal edifice is the famous cathedral, which has undergone complete restoration since 1883, and holds a high rank among English cathe drals of the second class, exhibiting all grades of transitional architecture from Norman to Perpen dicular. The south transeptal crypt incloses the site of the prior cruciform Saxon church. The west front as a portico is said to be the finest in Europe. A central tower, lantern-shaped, rises at the intersection of the nave and transept. The length of the cathedral is 476 feet : breadth at the great transepts, 203 feet ; height of central tower from the 150 feet. The town is regularly laid out, has an ex cellent grammar school with an endowment, a library, a school of art, science, and technology, a corn exchange in the 'Italian style, a jail and house of correction, a handsome parish church, and a number of charitable insti tutions. The city owns its water and electric lighting works, markets, sewage farm, bathing place. and isolation hospital, maintains parks and
recreation grounds, and provides cottage allot ments. Peterborough is an important railway centre and carries on an active trade in corn, coal, timber, bricks. and malt. It has also man ufactures of agricultural implements and exten sive locomotive works.
Anciently named Sledeshamstede, the city had its origin in a great Benedictine monastery, founded in (135. This monastery, reared in honor of Saint Peter, became one of the wealthiest and most important in England, but it was not until after having been destroyed by the Danes in 807, and rebuilt about 9011, that the town was called Peterborough. On the dissolution of the monas teries. the magnificent cathedral was spared, ow ing. it is supposed, to its containing the remains of Queen Catharine of Aragon. but it was vandal ized by Cromwell and his troopers in 1043. Pop ulation, in 1801, 3400; in 1851, 8700; in ISS1, 21,228; in 1901, 30,870. Consult: Poole, Peter borough (London, 1881) ; Da vys. The Cathedral and abbey of Peterborough (Peterborough, 1880) ; Sweet ing, Peterborough Cathedral ( London,