Forty people, including a number of new members, attended to hear Peter Tatam from Halesworth speak on \u201cThe Old Vicarage at Grantchester\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is evidence of settlement in Grantchester from the Saxon, Roman, Iron Age, Bronze Age and earlier periods. In the Doomsday book of 1086, it is named Grantesete. In the 1800s, much of the local land was mined for coprolites \u2013 fossilised dinosaur poo \u2013 which on treatment with sulphuric acid produces a valuable phosphate fertiliser. Although today\u2019s population is small, at about 550, it has four public houses. The Cambridge Distillery is located in High Street with a shop offering bespoke gin experiences. Recently a bottle of gin in the window was priced at \u00a3220. Because of the work of academics at Cambridge, Grantchester is home to the highest concentration of Nobel prizes per person than anywhere else in the world!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Old Vicarage was built in 1683 and is surrounded by large gardens and the nearby tearoom. Nowadays it also features numerous sculptures. It passed from church ownership into private hands in 1820, and was bought in 1850 by Samuel Widnall who extended it and established a printing business, the Widnall Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Old Vicarage is famous for its association with the poet Rupert Brooke, who went to Rugby School, and particularly for being the subject of his nostalgic 1912 poem. Written while he was in Berlin and longing for the English countryside, it highlights the peace of Grantchester village. The lines include At Over they fling oaths at one. And worse than oaths at Trumpington. And Ditton girls are mean and dirty. And there\u2019s none in Harston under thirty<\/em>. It ends: oh, yet stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?<\/em> Winston Churchill was a big fan of his poetry. There is a statue of Brook in today\u2019s garden. Orchard House was rented by Brooke before moving to The Old Vicarage and the nearby orchard tea garden. The Bloomsbury Group was an influential early 20th-century collective of British writers, artists, and intellectuals including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and E.M. Forster and they often met on the premises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Author and former politician Jeffrey Archer and his wife, Dame Mary Archer, have owned and lived at The Old Vicarage since 1979. He overcame bankruptcy in the 1970s by turning to writing. He now has an estimated personal fortune of around \u00a3210 million with his wealth primarily driven by sales of over 300 million copies of his novels worldwide. Mary Archer was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE, higher than an OBE) in June 2012. She was awarded the higher honour of Damehood for her extensive services to the NHS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Next meeting<\/strong>: 21 April. Roger Crabtree will talk about The History of Pyes, Cambridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Forty people, including a number of new members, attended to hear Peter Tatam from Halesworth speak on \u201cThe Old Vicarage at Grantchester\u201d. There is evidence of settlement in Grantchester from the Saxon, Roman, Iron Age, Bronze Age and earlier periods. In the Doomsday book of 1086, it is named Grantesete. In the 1800s, much of the local land was mined for coprolites \u2013 fossilised dinosaur poo \u2013 which on treatment with sulphuric acid produces a valuable phosphate fertiliser. Although today\u2019s population is small, at about 550, it has four public houses. The Cambridge Distillery is located in High Street with a shop offering bespoke gin experiences. Recently a bottle of gin in the window was priced at \u00a3220. Because of the work of academics at Cambridge, Grantchester is home to the highest concentration of Nobel prizes per person than anywhere else in the world! The Old Vicarage was built in 1683 and is surrounded by large gardens and the nearby tearoom. Nowadays it also features numerous sculptures. It passed from church ownership into private hands in 1820, and was bought in 1850 by Samuel Widnall who extended it and established a printing business, the Widnall Press. The Old Vicarage is famous for its association with the poet Rupert Brooke, who went to Rugby School, and particularly for being the subject of his nostalgic 1912 poem. Written while he was in Berlin and longing for the English countryside, it highlights the peace of Grantchester village. The lines include At Over they fling oaths at one. And worse than oaths at Trumpington. And Ditton girls are mean and dirty. And there\u2019s none in Harston under thirty. It ends: oh, yet stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? Winston Churchill was a big fan of his poetry. There is a statue of Brook in today\u2019s garden. Orchard House was rented by Brooke before moving to The Old Vicarage and the nearby orchard tea garden. The Bloomsbury Group was an influential early 20th-century collective of British writers, artists, and intellectuals including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and E.M. Forster and they often met on the premises. Author and former politician Jeffrey Archer and his wife, Dame Mary Archer, have owned and lived at The Old Vicarage since 1979. He overcame bankruptcy in the 1970s by turning to writing. He now has an estimated personal fortune of around \u00a3210 million with his wealth primarily driven by sales of over 300 million copies of his novels worldwide. Mary Archer was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE, higher than an OBE) in June 2012. She was awarded the higher honour of Damehood for her extensive services to the NHS. Our Next meeting: 21 April. Roger Crabtree will talk about The History of Pyes, Cambridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/joanna-kosinska-B6yDtYs2IgY-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1709&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Tb23-1y1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5954,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions\/5954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}