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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Peterborough
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(135,000 in 1991) City in Cambridgeshire, on the river Nene. It derives from a Benedictine abbey founded here in about 650 by an Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia. The surviving abbey church was built mainly in the 12–13C; after the *dissolution of the monasteries it became, in 1542, the cathedral of a new Anglican diocese. The Norman nave is its greatest glory, surmounted by an early 13C painted ceiling; contemporary with the ceiling is the extraordinary west front, with three massively tall Gothic arches, like gaping mouths; the so-called New Building, added as an extension behind the altar in the early 16C, is famous for its fan vaulting.
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Apart from the cathedral and its immediate surroundings, little remains of Peterborough's past. It became an industrial town in the 19C and has been much rebuilt in the late 20C. Until 1965 it retained one medieval privilege, being administered as a separate county, the Soke of Peterborough.
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