Until a very few years ago there was a mediaeval building at Peterborough of the greatest interest. This was the old =Tithe Barn= of the Abbey, situated in the Manor of Boroughbury, on the Lincoln Road. It was much the finest in the kingdom. Unhappily the "enterprising builder" has obtained possession of it, and it has been pulled down, the materials, all Barnack stone, having been employed in building houses. It was of good thirteenth century work, and in perfect condition. On the east side were two large porches, by which a waggon fully laden could enter the barn. The roof was supported by very massive timbers rising from the ground, the whole arrangement resembling a wooden church with aisles. =The Museum= in Queen Street is noted for its collection of Roman and Saxon antiquities from the city and district; amongst the former are the noted coffin tile stamped LEG IX. HISP.; the vase showing a coursing match with the hare and hounds in relief, coins, pottery, brooches, and other jewellery. The Saxon specimens consist of pottery, jewellery, and weapons chiefly exhumed at Woodston, about one mile south-west of the river bridge. The interesting collection of bone, wood, horn, and straw marquetry work made at Norman Cross (5 miles) by the French prisoners during the years 1797 to 1814, is unique. MSS. of the Northamptonshire poet, John Clare, are preserved in this institution, together with a large number of other local works. CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY. The inhabitants of the Fen country, when first distinguished by a special name, were known as the Gyrvii. Their district included the south part of Lincolnshire, the north part of Northamptonshire, and the greater part of Cambridgeshire. The southern Gyrvii were a province of East Anglia; the Gyrvii of the north appear to have been allied to the East Anglians, and perhaps inclined to become united with them; but they were ultimately absorbed in the great Midland Kingdom of Mercia. Bishop Stubbs,[29] speaking of the early Fasti of Peterborough, says: "Mercia, late in its formation as a kingdom, sprang at once into a great state under Penda; late in its adoption of Christianity, it seems from the period of its conversion to have taken a prominent place at once among the Christian powers. The Chronicle places the conversion in 655, and a very few years saw it the best governed and best organised province of the Church. In less than thirty years it was divided into five dioceses, amongst which the place of the Fen country is more clearly definable. The bishopric of Lindsey occupied the north of Lincolnshire, reaching to the Witham: a line drawn from the south point of Nottinghamshire to the Cam would probably represent the western border of the Gyrvii; the border of Cambridgeshire was the boundary of the dioceses of Elmham and Dunwich. The Fen country thus falls into the eastern portion of the great Lichfield diocese, which for a few years after 680 had its own