The Millfield Link

Trust, Love, and Heart

Who remembers Hobson’s Adventure Playground? What about people dancing in St Martin’s Street while Lloyd Watson and The Soulmates rehearsed? Did you get ESOL lessons at PARCA? Did you spend your Sundays as a kid making cups of tea for the elders who visited? Remember the Peterborough Asian Centre? And the food!

Rathore Continental Food Store, Italian ice-cream, FMA Food Store, A Tasca, Chicken Palace…

“You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips in Millfield.”

The Millfield Link was an epic project that took place between 2019-2021.

It was inspired by the Link Road mural and funded by National Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England, and Peterborough City Council. It celebrated the history of Millfield over the last 50 years or so.

The Millfield Link had 3 main strands:

• The restoration of the Link Road mural
• The collection of stories and memories of the neighbourhood
• The creation of new artworks and exhibitions

The Millfield Link couldn’t have been possible without the support of hundreds of people from Millfield. You can read more about everyone involved by clicking here.

A photograph taken in the 1980s of a crowd of people stood in front of a colourful mural.

A black and white photo of a family sat on a brick fence.

A woman stood in front of a custom-built yellow audio box. On the top of the box are buttons. The woman is pushing one and holding a telephone to her ear.

An overhead photo of a group of people sat in a circle talking.

A dark photo of a crowd of people watching a documentary on a projector screen.

A photo taken in the 1980s of Francis Gomila with members of the Millfield community.

A photo by Chris Porsz taken in the 1980s of two shopkeepers in their.

What we did

The restoration of the Link Road mural

In the summer of 2021, a team of brilliant Peterborough artists came together to restore the mural. Street Arts Hire (Nathan ‘Nyces’ Murdoch), Tony Nero, Stuart Payn, Amanda Rigby, Jason Duckmanton, and Katie Scott all took on different sections of the mural. Working together with specialist paint, they brought the faded mural back to life!

Click here for more info about the Link mural restoration

The collection of stories and memories

We chatted to residents, both past and present, and recorded their experiences of living and working in Millfield in their lifetimes. A rich variety of stories were shared – spanning themes of Community Spirit, Pride, Making Millfield Home, Growing Up, and more.

One highlight of the project was Deljit Singh’s Magical History Tours of Millfield, which went viral on Facebook with over 30,000 views. Part one is available to watch at the top of this page, and you can watch part two on our Interesting Stuff section.

Other incredible stories include the Gladstone Carnival, Hobson’s Adventure Playground, Brown’s Dance Academy, making friends, playing in the parks, Portugal winning the Euros, going to school as a new arrival to England, hanging out in Chicken Palace, working at businesses on Lincoln Road, and loads more. Click the button below to see the amazing variety of memories gathered as part of the Millfield Link.

Click here for more of the Millfield Link archive

The creation of new artworks and exhibitions

Artists Matt Booker and Prin Marshall were selected by a community panel in Millfield to create new artworks inspired by the recent history of the Millfield area.

Matt created a series of ten banners, and Prin created a series of five “sticker-style” illustrations. Each one told a different story about the neighbourhood. The collection was installed in the garden of the Allama Iqbal centre during August 2021, and some of the pieces are now on permanent display.

We also had a series of artists hanging out in spaces around Millfield – from mosques to green spaces – and creating artworks inspired their time. All that brilliant work was exhibited in Peterborough Museum in November 2021.