1941: On this day, 814 20-year-old city girls responded to their call-up papers - although some forgot their registration card! Many of the girls had come with their mothers, while others had their boyfriends for company. Some are described as arriving 'with an army escort on either side'. Quite a few perambulators are also recorded as being parked outside the building. (Gray, David, Peterborough at War 1939-1945, David Gray, 2011)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.
Peterborough Cathedral was originally known as Peterborough Abbey and was a home to Benedictine monks. It was also home to the widow Dame Agnes in the final years of her life.
Dame Agnes was said to live in rooms between the choir and Lady Chapel, a building which has been destroyed, but the outline of which can be clearly observed on the walls on the North East side of the cathedral. There existed a passageway between the lady chapel and choir which led to a smaller chapel, and it was above this that Dame Agnes was said to live.
A lady of devotion, she dedicated her final years to listening to services and gazing through a small hole down onto the altar of the Lady Chapel below her. She would only have been able to see the altar and, we can assume, would have spent the end of her life deep in prayer, in a hermit-like existence.
References:
W. D. Sweeting (ed.), Fenland Notes and Queries, A Quarterly Antiquarian Journal for the Fenlands (1891) (online edition at archive.org)