Saint Fursey was an Irish monk who did much to establish Christianity throughout the British Isles and particularly in East Anglia. He reportedly experienced angelic visions of the afterlife. Fursey is one of the Four Comely Saints.

Péronne is a commune of the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. It is the former site of the Péronne monastery, founded by the Anglo-Saxon Eorcenwald. Its site became the resting place for St. Fursa, celebrated by the famous English historian Bede. The monastery was popular with Irish monks, among them Cellanus, whose letters to Aldhelm the Bishop of Sherborne survive. So renowned was Péronne for Irish monks that the monastery became known as Perrona Scottorum. The monastery was destroyed in a Viking raid in 880. It is close to where the 1916, first 1918 and second 1918 Battles of the Somme took place during the First World War. The Museum of the Great War is located in the château.