Orton
last updated 15/04/06

This is the entrance to Orton Centre. The cultural centre of Orton. The picture always looks better in black and white. When I was at Bushfield we used to only take pictures in black and white. They had some scaffolding up in 1988 and the picture came out really well.

In St Johns Primary School they have got an aeriel view of the area and it looks like a prison camp as all the houses are in rows. I think this is really cool.

When they built Hampton they purposely did not build a footbridge/path/cycleway/underpaths for access as they didn't want Ortoners in their posh estate. Houses there originally sold for a minimum of 80k (in the days when 80k was a lot of money for a house! - i.e. 1999) to keep the 'riff-raff' out. It is again the poor that suffer, they have shut down the food shop in Orton Centre so people without cars have to cross a very busy road to get to Tesco's in Hampton.

I have been informed that they may be building a subway from the tunnel.

We moved as a family to Orton in 1978 to start a church here. The church in Orton has been battered. One minister had a nervous breakdown because he worked so hard to get a building for his church and it did not work out.

I went to Christian Prescence who meet at Leighton Community Centre and the minister said that if he did not meet here then 'somebody else would'.

There are a lot of good biblically sound churches in Peterborough, but in the Ortons we are struggling. There is Orton Gospel Hall which has 60 - 80 people in it and is packed on Sunday morning. Christ Church, Orton Goldhay which has a reasonable number - I have never counted. Christian Prescence that had between 8 and 20 people. I go to the Salvation Army who meet at Matley Community Centre at 10:15h till 11:15h. They have between 13 and 30 people there.

I meet with the officer there on Friday mornings before work at 7:00h till 8:00h and we go for a cycle ride round Ferry Meadows and stop and pray for the LORD to move in Orton.

There are 20,000 people in the Ortons and the Church is under represented there in comparison to other areas of Peterborough. I went to St. Johns in Werrington and it was excellent, it was packed full of people (probably 150-200) and Werrington is the same size as Orton if not smaller.