Grantchester Village

Grantchester is a village two miles south of Cambridge, reachable by the footpath along the Cam from Newnham (about 45 minutes' walk) or by punt from Scudamore's at Granta Place (roughly 90 minutes each way). It is famously associated with Rupert Brooke, who lived there as a student and immortalised it in his 1912 poem "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester."

The Orchard Tea Garden, which has been serving tea and scones in its apple orchard since 1897, is the destination most visitors aim for — Rupert Brooke ate here, as did Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, and E.M. Forster. On a warm afternoon, punting upstream and mooring at the Orchard is the closest thing Cambridge has to a perfect day out.

things to do sight
A story
Rupert Brooke wrote "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" in a café in Berlin in 1912, homesick for Cambridge and consumed by nostalgia for a village where he had lived as a student. The poem ends with the lines "Stands the Church clock at ten to three? / And is there honey still for tea?" The church clock, which had been stopped for repairs when Brooke wrote this, was restored and for decades deliberately set to ten to three in his honour. It now keeps proper time.

Other places in Things to Do