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Grantchester is a village on the River Cam or Granta in Cambridgeshire, England. It is listed in the Domesday Book (1086) as Grantesete and Grauntsethe. Grantchester is said to have the world's highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners, most of these presumably being current or retired academics from the nearby University of Cambridge.
Tourists and students often travel from Cambridge by punt to picnic in the meadows or take tea at The Orchard. In 1897, a group of Cambridge students persuaded the owner of Orchard House to serve them tea, and this became a regular practice. Lodgers at Orchard House included the Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke, who later moved next door to the Old Vicarage. In 1912, while in Berlin, he wrote a poem of homesickness entitled "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester". The house is currently the home of the Cambridge scientist Mary Archer and her husband, Jeffrey Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare.
The footpath to Cambridge that runs beside Grantchester Meadows is nicknamed the Grantchester Grind. Further upstream is Byron's Pool, named after Lord Byron, who is said (by Brooke, at least) to have swum there. The pool is now below a modern weir where the Bourn Brook flows into the River Cam.
Grantchester is the subject of "Grantchester Meadows", a song by Pink Floyd, whose lead singer and guitarist David Gilmour was born there.
[edit] Legends
An underground passage is said to run from the Old Manor house to King's College Chapel two miles away. It was said that a fiddler who offered to follow the passage set off playing his fiddle; the music became fainter and fainter, until it was heard no more and the fiddler was never seen or heard of again. On a 17th century map of Grantchester, one of the fields is called Fiddler's Close.
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[edit] Panoramic photo gallery
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(Source: Wikipedia) |