A riverside village two miles south of Cambridge, reached by the meadows path and known for tea in an orchard.
Grantchester is a village strung along the River Cam, roughly two miles south of Cambridge. It appears in Domesday Book as Grantesete and is mentioned even earlier in Bede. Its name comes from the Old English suffix for a fort, and it has sometimes been confused with the "Fort Granta" of early British history, though the main settlements of Roman and Saxon times lay at Castle Hill in Cambridge.
The village is bound up with the university. In 1897 a group of students persuaded the owner of Orchard House to serve them tea in the apple orchard; the habit stuck, and visitors still take tea at the Orchard. The poet Rupert Brooke lodged at Orchard House and later wrote "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" in Berlin in 1912. Pubs include the Blue Ball Inn and the Green Man.
The parish church, dedicated to St Andrew and St Mary, preserves twelfth-century work, a mid-fourteenth-century chancel and a Grade II* listing. Upstream is Byron's Pool, now a Local Nature Reserve. Each Boxing Day the village holds a barrel race, a tradition dating from the 1960s.
The classic route from Cambridge is on foot along the riverside meadow footpath, nicknamed the Grantchester Grind, from Newnham; Grantchester Meadows is the open land alongside it. Some visitors travel by punt and picnic on the meadows. The village is also the setting of the ITV drama Grantchester, filmed on location. Neighbouring Trumpington is the nearest part of the city.
The Grade II* parish church of Grantchester, with 12th-century parts, a Norman font and a screen role in a TV drama.
River meadows linking Newnham to Grantchester, used for walking, picnics and the classic punt-to-the-pub trip.
A tea garden in an orchard at Grantchester, serving students and visitors since 1897.
A Grantchester free house with a brasserie, bar and balcony.