Expanding an LVM partition at the front

[Matthew Saltzman]

I deleted the partition immediately in front of an LVM physical volume.
I'd like to use the freed space as part of the LVM volume group.  I know
I could create a new partition in the same place, make it a physical
volume and add it to the group, but because the space is contiguous, I
wondered if it is possible just to move the front of the existing PV
partition to include the freed space.  

I tried changing the start of the partition using fdisk, but then the PV
is no longer recognized by LVM.  I suppose that means that there is
information about the PV stored in a particular location at the front of
the partition.  Putting the starting point back makes the PV
recognizable again.

So is there a utility that can move the front of a physical volume
partition?  (gparted and fdisk apparently can't).

TIA.