10. Cumbergate

kwise from top left: fans at the concert, cuttings from the Spalding Guardian, Sounds Force Five reunited in 2015 for the blue plaque unveiling and an original ticket k legend Jimi Hendrix and (inset ) the blue plaque commemorating his visit to Spalding.

Reader Natalie Bunyan got in touch after recognising her great- grandfather in the picture above which featured in Looking Back on May 11.

Natalie told me: “In the 1953 picture my great grandad is in the top left hand corner.He is quite prominent, the cheeky looking gentleman and my nan is behind him with her hand on his shoulder.

“Her name was Margaret Bunyan and his name was Sidney Plant.

She added: “My grandad thinks it was a social event at the Post Office Club (he hadn’t met my nan then). I’ve been informed my great nan Dorothy is also in the picture to theleft hand side of my nan.’’

Thanks for the info, Natalie.

This plaque is located on a currently unlet building in Cumbergate, near to the entrance to Queensgate.

The English Place-name Society interprets “Cumbergate” as the “street of the woolcombers”, and finds that the name occurs as early as the mid-13th century. Originally the street had two ‘arms’, thenorth-south arm which still (largely) exists, and an eastwest arm, which was obliterated by the building of Queensgate.

Most of this building is original 15th Century timber-framing. Although the city must have had a ‘tradition’ of timberframed buildings, it remains a rare survival, and Table Hall in the CathedralPrecincts is the only other major such structure in the city centre.

Probably originally built by wool-combers, part of this building was still occupied by “John Simpson, wool-comber” in the early 17th century.

It was acquired, together with a range of buildings opposite, by the Peterborough Feoffees (a board of trustees with the responsibility for the administration of parish charities and for some functions of local government).

Various deeds describe the building as ‘to be converted to a House of Maintenance’ (1726), ‘dwelling rooms for the use of the poor’ (1774 and 1815) and ‘known as the Old Work- house’ (1826 and 1869).

In an early piece of ‘outsourcing’ the Feoffees leased the building, in the early 1720s, to Mathew Marriott, a noted entrepreneur who also ‘controlled’ several workhouses in inner London, outer London, and Luton.

Once the national system of Poor Law Workhouses was introduced in the 1830s this building was converted to use as Almshouses from 1837 until 1969. It underwent restoration and alteration in the early 1900s, with major repair and conversion to retail use occurring in the 1980s.

Opposite is the remaining part of another block of almshouses, partly of 1835, and partly of 1903, built by the Feoffees with money bequeathed by Miss Pears, (see the plaque on the corner block), where the House of Correction or Bridewell had probably stood. The 1903 block, now the main part of Carluccio’s, was designed by local architect James G Stallebrass. There was a similar block at the north end of the site (replaced by the superstructure of Queensgate).

This plaque is the tenth in a series of twenty blue plaques recently installed in the city centre byPeterborough Civic Society. Further details about all the plaques can be found in the accompanying leaflet available at the Visitor Information Centre, or via the Society’s website.