Further Necessary Steps...

....if we're ever going to finish this mile of English road. And if you've heard that the rolling English roads were made by rolling English drunkards then you're in for an inebriated experience, for the rest of our journey one right-angle bend follows another in rapid succession, as we descend slowly to the bridge over the river.

Next to the White Cottage stand a row of brick cottages and opposite that a house which is now the vicarage, but was formerly the church warden's house and was known as Cresswell's after one of the past inhabitants.

The vicarage is conveniently close to the church, which wasn't the case with the two former vicarages - more of one of those later. Faithful readers of this blog may remember that I wrote about the church here.

Crossing the road again, (on one of those dangerous bends mentioned earlier - the risks I take to bring you this stuff!) we come to two more cottages in the care of the Cottage Improvement Society which stand next to the footpath which can be followed through the Meadows and right into Cambridge. Students from the University used to call it "the Grantchester grind" which shows that they must have been a) very unfit; it's only 2 miles of level walking, and b) totally oblivious to the beauty around them.

Back over the road again (more risks!) there's a tiny little house which was once the gatekeeper's lodge for Manor Farm. Friends of mine lived there for a while and found that, unlike the Tardis, it's even smaller inside than it looks from outside. It was also not a good place for people who disliked the sound of church bells. Or tractors.

Manor Farmhouse itself can be seen by looking over an ancient brick wall. It's an intriguing building with gable ends facing in all directions, huge chimney stacks in unlikely places and a variety of different architectural styles. You might as well ask a Hollywood actress her age as enquire about the age of this building! Parts of it are thought to be very old but a number of facelifts and reconstructions have taken place through the centuries. An old story states that there is a tunnel leading from the house to Kings College in Cambridge and believe it or not the start of a tunnel has been discovered. However it's probably just an old sewer leading down to the river. One can imagine that someone might have escaped down such a tunnel, possibly at a time of religious intolerance, and turned up in the college having travelled down the river, giving rise to the story.

Dodging back across the road again we find Spring Lane leading down to Parson's Meadow, where in days of yore the vicar kept his horse.

Next to the lane is a small gate leading into The Orchard Tea Gardens. In summer this is very much on the tourist trail from its association with the poet Rupert Brooke who lodged at The Old Vicarage which stands next door to the Tea Gardens. It's going to take us a little while to get there as we're following the road around.

Dove Cottage may be familiar to some of you as I wrote about it in an earlier post. It was once used for keeping pigeons but is now the house of the farm manager. In the garden is a pond which was once part of Manor Farm's moat. It was common for farm houses to have such a feature in the past, partly for reasons of status and partly to provide fish to supplement the diet in the winter months.

Running up next to the moat is a hidden footpath which was once a road used for bringing grain to the water mill. Like many old tracks its legal status as a right of way has been maintained despite its falling into disuse as a road.

Yew Garth is a rather fine old dwelling which was once the home of Professor Willmer who published his sketchbook "Old Grantchester" back in the 70s. Much of what I know about the village I found in those pages and it also inspired me to find out more about my local area. The central portion of the house dates back to the 17th century at least.

Then it's past Ivydene, which I always think of as Mr Clamp's house. He still lives in the village and can still be seen out walking on fine days despite being over 100 years young. Then it's past Lyndewood and Riversdale, past the main entrance to The Orchard to arrive at the Old Vicarage, seen above. The odd-looking chimneys are to be seen on several houses in the village. This is where Rupert Brooke once lodged though I'm led to believe that he wasn't particularly punctual paying his rent and often wrote the lady of the house a few lines of poetry in lieu of cash! The present occupants are Lord and Lady Archer, aka Jeffrey Archer and Dr Mary Archer.

Another footpath leads around to the Millpond where in teenage years I would come on the punt which my friends and I had restored, having found it wrecked in the river. The local policeman said "If nobody claims it you boys can keep it". The mill burned down in 1929 but the house survived and still stands on the mill bridge. I wrote about the mill here. Just for a change here's a photograph of the back of the building.

And that concludes our mile of English road. As you can see it's packed with history and there's probably even more that I've left out because of lack of space and lack of knowledge; much more remains to be discovered. Lets finish with the words of Rupert Brooke, as he sat in a cafe in Berlin, dreaming of home:

Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

Take care.

Shall We Walk A Little Farther?....

....a little farther along our mile of English road, that is. We'd got as far as the old school, I believe, scarcely 100 yards from our starting point!

We've come now to the village green, or rather what's left of it;  it's been whittled away over the centuries till now it's only a few paces across. It was probably never particularly extensive as the meadows which lie a short distance away down beside the river have always served for grazing animals, playing cricket and other purposes usually carried out on the green. The cottages above were actually built on part of the green.

Opposite the cottages stands one of the village's four pubs, The Green Man. It once served as a coaching inn and there are outbuildings behind the pub and the neighbouring house which tell of its former use. The building probably dates back to at least the sixteenth century when a pub called the Three Tuns is recorded as having been on this spot. Pub names have changed throughout the centuries.

Just east of The Green Man stands another pub The Red Lion, which has also been known as The Axe And Saw at times during its history. This was the pub I first frequented, somewhat before my eighteenth birthday, but with the blessing of the landlord of the pub, the village policeman and the local vicar!

The vicar at that time was a man who regularly hung his cassock up behind the pub door "to keep an eye on the rest of his flock". As he often pointed out "Jesus turned water into wine, not the other way about!". He allowed the young people of the village to play croquet on the vicarage lawn, mend our boat in his garage and take a short cut through his garden whenever we wanted. The pub landlord had tragically lost a son who was about my age, which was probably why he liked our company. On one occasion, so the story goes, someone barged into the pub, interrupting the landlord's conversation and demanding to know where the toilet was without any 'please or thankyou'. The landlord pointed out the direction, "It says 'Gentlemen' on the door, sir," he added, "but don't let that deter you!" As for the policeman, he played rock'n'roll piano on a Friday night and as he observed "It's easy for me to keep an eye on you lads when you're in the pub!"

It was even more convenient for him that the Police House was directly opposite the pub. Although there is still a policeman living in the house he's no longer the 'village bobby', if you need the police now you have to phone the main police station and they send out someone in a car, eventually.

Next to The Green Man is a large thatched house known as Byron's Lodge. The poet Byron did have some connection with the village and was supposed to have swum in nearby Byron's Pool, but no one seems to be too sure about his links to this house. 

And next to that is The White Cottage, a picturesque building with a fine show of roses in the front garden during the summer months. E N Willmer, in his book "Old Grantchester", published 35 years ago, tells us that the house has been occupied down the years by a butcher, a scrap-metal dealer, a Nobel Laureate, a professor of music (Sir William Sterndale Bennett, no less)and an authority on the preservation of African big game.

Well, we've still got a fair way to go.

Take care.

A Mile Of English Road

Two or three times a week I walk from Trumpington to Grantchester (or vice versa) and entertain myself by thinking about the history of the places I pass, both their proper, formal history and the informal, personal stories that each place evokes. Gradually this has taken shape as a projected blog-post, though it would be a very long one. But here goes with the first few hundred yards!

We'll start at the Grantchester end, not actually at my mother's house (for she's the reason for my frequent visits) but at the road-junction known to locals as the Rose And Crown turning. The pub which stands there now is called "The Rupert Brooke" after the poet who lost his life in the First World War. I suppose the change of name - in the 70s, I think - was to attract the tourists, but locals viewed the change of identity with disdain and carried on calling it the Rose, or if they were feeling witty, "The Bear" - from Rupert Bear, of course. It wasn't always a T-junction either; it was once a crossroads with a road running through what is now the pub car park. The course of the track can be seen in the meadow beyond. When I was a schoolboy there was an archaeological dig which unearthed Roman artefacts in that meadow proving the antiquity of the site. It's what you might expect - Grantchester - Granta Castra - Latin for the camp on the River Granta.

Next to the pub is a house with a huge front window which rather gives the game away - it was once one of several shops in the village. Now sadly there are none. The eagle-eyed may see several little windows reflected in the glass. These are part of Wright's Row, a much-loved and much-photographed group of cottages.

Unfortunately it's rare to see the Row nowadays without cars parked in front. As you can see the cottages in the row are of different styles and different ages. The Cambridge Cottage Improvement Society took them over in 1938 as a result of the generosity of the gloriously named Jimmy Nutter, once the miller of the village. There were formerly eight cottages but the Society reorganised them into five dwellings. Even so they are not particularly spacious abodes. You might just make out one of the former doorsteps in the middle of the picture. A child with excessive energy and imagination might run along knocking on all the doors and then hide in the bushes to see the fun. Not me, of course.

After Vicarage Drive stands a small thatched building known as The Reading Room. It was where the village youth club used to meet and one of our projects was to redecorate the inside of the room for the village. I can tell you that painting around those tiny diamond-shaped panes of glass is not a task for those without patience. Although it was known as The Reading Room I don't think it was used much for that purpose, though it did contain a couple of bookcases. It was used, as it still is, as an annex to the Village Hall, which stands behind it, and was used for small groups to hold meetings. It was originally built as the village school, in 1830, and was said to be so successful that it once had 100 pupils, many coming from neighbouring villages which had no schools. Goodness knows how they all fitted in to the tiny building. As you can see it's connected to the house next door which was the schoolmaster's house.

And opposite stands the Victorian school building, now a private house. My brother attended for a short while but I was already at grammar school when we moved into the village.

Well, we don't seem to have travelled very far at all. Another day perhaps.

Take care.