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.
In 1536 a Tudor house called Neville Place was built by Humphrey Orme, who was a courtier of Henry VIII. The house was built on the land where the current museum is. The Ormes were important in Peterborough for over 250 years. They were Members of Parliament, Magistrates and also Feoffees. They were royalist during the English Civil War and were involved in the building of the Guildhall after the Restoration.
Note: the building of Neville Place in 1536 is currently disputed because Humphrey Orme rented the manor of West Deeping in that year. Written evidence of the Ormes living in Priestgate does not appear until the early 17th Century when they were living in a cottage next to Neville's Orchard.
In 2019 a recall petition was launched in the Peterborough constituency to remove the Labour Member of Parliament, Fiona Onasanya. This was the first to successfully remove an MP.
The petition was triggered in March 2019 after Fiona Onasanya failed to get permission to appeal against her conviction for perverting the course of justice and its resulting 3 month prison sentence. She, together with her brother Festus, had misled the police over a speeding offence in 2017 and was convicted in December 2018.
She was expelled from the Labour Party following her conviction but refused to resign from parliament. The recall petition ran between 19th March and 1st May 2019 and was signed by 19 261 people out of the 69 673 eligible electors, greatly exceeding the 10% required to vacate the seat.
A by-election was run on 6th June 2019 and was won by Lisa Forbes of the Labour Party, the Brexit Party’s Mike Green came in second place.
On 6 August 2019 Fiona Onasanya was struck off as a solicitor by the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal which found she had failed to "uphold the rule of law and proper administration of justice" and "acted dishonestly". (BBC News)
Brian Mawhinney was born in Belfast in 1940 and studied physics at Queen's University Belfast, going on to gain a PhD in radiation physics at the Royal Free Hospital in London. He entered politics and in 1979 he was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Peterborough and served until 1997 when a boundary reorganisation occurred and he sat for the new constituency of North West Cambridgeshire and was its MP until he stood down in 2005. He was knighted in 1997 and entered the House of Lords in 2005.
During his 25 year parliamentary career he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Northern Ireland Office (1986-1990), Minister of State in the Department of Health (1992-1994), Secretary of State for Transport (1994-1995) and Party Chairman of the Conservative Party (1995-1997).
Outside politics he became chairman of the football league in 2003 a tenure that lasted for seven years, during this time he helped reform the league's structure, renamed the divisions as the Championship, League One and League two and introduced the "fit-and-proper" test for club ownership.
He died on 9 November 2019 in Peterborough.
References:
https://members.parliament.uk/...
https://www.theguardian.com/po..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-....
Image:
Parliamentary copyright By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62521960
Edward Wortley Montagu, from Wortley in Yorkshire, was the MP for Peterborough from 1734 to his death in 1761. His father the Hon. Sidney Wortley Montagu had been MP for Peterborough from 1698 until his death in 1727 (with two terms as the Huntingdon MP between 1713 and 1722). He had been known as Sidney Montagu, but added Wortley after he married Anne, the illegitimate heir of Sir Francis Wortley.
Edward famously eloped with Lady Mary Pierrepont in 1712 who upon marriage became Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She left a large collection of letters detailing their relationship and time they spent together in Turkey whilst Edward was working as the British Ambassador. She is also noted as the first person to bring inoculation to the UK.
Edward Wortley, as he referred to himself, followed his father to the post of Peterborough’s MP in 1734 and remained the city’s representative until his death in 1761. His name lives on in The Wortley Almshouses, known locally as The Wortley Arms.
In 1744 Wortley gifted two buildings and four acres of land on Westgate to the Feoffees, who oversaw charity in the city of Peterborough, but not as almshouses: he gifted a workhouse. The workhouse was created to support the poor of the city and was an addition to the workhouse in Cumbergate which had been created in 1726. The people living there would have been working in the four acres of farm land attached to the property to earn their keep. In 1791 William Watson, a farmer, left the workhouse after 12 years of running it to move to Uppingham to ‘farm their poor’. It is the same workhouse that purportedly inspired Charles Dickens in his writing of Oliver Twist.
A new workhouse was built on Thorpe Road in 1836, so the Wortley workhouse was converted into almhouses for the poor instead.
Edward Wortley died in 1761 and left an extensive will. In a codicil to the will he provided £200 for people in Peterborough on his death, which was a considerable sum of money. He left most of his money and estate to his children Edward, an eccentric man who died without children, and Mary who married John Stuart 3rd Earl of Bute. Stuart became the British Prime Minister a year after Edward’s death.
The building can be easily viewed on Westgate and is currently used as a public house.
References:
Peterborough Almshouse Trust, Release of Lease and Release, 1744, PAS/ALM/2/1/10/10/8.
Cruickshanks, E. and Harrison, R., Montagu, Edward Wortley (1678-1761), History of Parliament Online (see link).
Peterborough Workhouse, Stamford Mercury, 12 August 1791, p. 4.
Picture: The Wortley Almshouses cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Ian S - geograph.org.uk/p/2805244.
Lord David George Brownlow Cecil, also known as Lord Burghley, was born at Burghley House in February 1905 and became a Conservative MP for Peterborough in 1931, following in the footsteps of a great number of his forebears.
What was remarkable about Lord Burghley was his athletic ability. His first notable athletic success was running around the great court at Trinity University in Cambridge in a record-breaking time. This story was included in the film Chariots of Fire, although his name was changed.
His real skill was in hurdling and that was what earned him a place in the British Olympic team in Amsterdam in 1928. He travelled to the games by boat from Liverpool with his team mates; a photograph shows him grinning with them on their journey. He competed in the 400m hurdles and won! British spectators were said to be ‘wild with delight’ and made a ‘deafening’ noise when the Union Jack was raised whilst he was on the podium. Burghley was even lifted out of the stadium on a chair by his excited supporters.1
After his win, he went to have tea with his fiancée in his hotel. She had been a great support to him during the games, as had his parents The Fifth Marquess and Marchioness of Exeter, who supported him from the stands.
Before the next Olympic Games in 1932 he had become MP for Peterborough, so when he earned a silver in the 4 x 400m hurdles, he did so as a representative of the city and soke. He was also captain of the British team.
He decided to retire in 1933 and looking back said ‘The greatest race I ever had…was the four hundred metres at the Olympic Games at Amsterdam. Never did I strain every ounce of strength and muscle so hard as I did then.’2
He was an advocate for increasing the number of athletics tracks in the UK, as well as being an active member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Amateur Athletic Association.
Some memorabilia is available to view at Burghley House as part of the house tours.
1. Sheffield Daily Press, 31 July 1928, p. 10.
2. Northampton Mercury, 14 July 1933, p. 14.
In 1536 a Tudor house called Neville Place was built by Humphrey Orme, w…
Lord David George Brownlow Cecil, also known as Lord Burghley, was born…