Doors 293 – Doors of Peterborough (Part I)
Last year, I made a work trip to Peterborough to run a workshop, and as ever when on my travels, I took the opportunity early in the morning before the workshop started to gather my thoughts and have a little wander around the place taking photographs and noticing things.
Peterborough is a Cathedral City in eastern central England, and although I have visited it before when I lived in Cambridgeshire, it was always on a night out or to an office, so I hadn’t really ever got to know the place. What surprised me the most wasn’t the incredible architecture around the cathedral or the clean and tidy streets, it was instead the levels of deprivation, and I was quite shocked. There were a lot of rough sleepers about the place and the tell-tale signs of a poverty-stricken society containing streets full of bookies, pound shops, gambling arcades and vape shops – ‘Aladdin’s caves’ of bright lights and hope.
I have to say I found the experience profoundly depressing, and a contemporary illustration of how the previous government of 14 years had failed people at the lower end of the economic spectrum. The first thing I saw as I stepped out of the station was a long queue of people with tatty clothes and plastic bags outside a foodbank. We should hang our heads in shame that foodbanks even exist in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, while the richest in our society just get richer.
On a brighter note, Peterborough had pockets of street art and, importantly to today’s post, plenty of interesting doors to admire. Let’s get cracking:
Plenty more to come from this trip to Peterborough next time. May I wish you a happy weekend.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.
by Scooj
Natural adventures 
You have a great collection this week. Peterborough has some amazing doors👍
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Thank you.
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Some handsome examples
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Thank you.
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You have a great collection of doors, Steve. The sad conditions you mention are common in many cities in this country, and several here in Connecticut. We’ve never recovered from the loss of most manufacturing and much of our storied insurance industry.
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I believe our poverty is less to do with loss of industry or jobs, but more the terrible decline in funding for public services, where the most vulnerable slip through the cracks. Brexit of course has been a most terrible economic mistake, and as a nation we are collectively much poorer for it.
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It began here when we closed publicly funded mental hospitals back in the 1980s. We said those people could live independently. Most ended up on the street.
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Well said.
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Thank you. I am still haunted by the visualisation of the recklessness of decimating our public services.
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Reckless and self defeating, the very essence of care has been abandoned. I could go on!
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A beautiful gallery of Peterborough Stephen.
I like that tower, not a perfect fit but the arch and towers are amazing and deeply iconic of the era of when the Cathedral was built some 900 odd years ago and those doors are still in excellent shape, too.
The Edward Wortly house is my favorite both for the brickwork and the windows and the door in perfect balance.
Great photos all, Stephen. Great choices to share this week.
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Thank you Suzette
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The Norman Gate has an appearance of a bearded chessman, the king — my pareidolia I’d reckon.
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I see what you mean.
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Your comments about poverty and hunger could not be more timely. The age of the doors seems to be history looking at us, wondering if we’ve learned anything about ourselves.
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I fear we have learned little, or at least some have forgotten.
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