Old Vicarage, Grantchester
52°10′36″N 0°05′50″E / 52.17661°N 0.09715°E
The Old Vicarage in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester is a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke, who lived nearby and in 1912 referenced it in an eponymous poem – "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester".[1] The house is next door to The Orchard tea garden, also part of the poem. A portrait statue of Brooke by Paul Day stands in the front garden.[2]
The Old Vicarage was built in around 1685 on the site of an earlier building, a minute's walk from the Church of St Andrew and St Mary. It passed from church ownership into private hands in 1820, and was bought in 1850 by Samuel Page Widnall (1825–1894),[3] who extended it and established a printing business, the Widnall Press.[4]
In 1910 it was owned by Henry and Florence Neeve from whom Rupert Brooke rented a room and, later, a large part of the house. Brooke's mother bought the house in 1916 and gave it to his friend, the economist Dudley Ward.[3] In December 1979, it was bought by the scientist Mary Archer, who had recently been appointed to a position at Cambridge University, and her husband Jeffrey Archer, then a politician and subsequently a novelist.[5] The house has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England since August 1962.[6]
The Guardian crossword setter John Galbraith Graham (Araucaria) set a clue often described as epitomising his clue-making: Poetical scene with surprisingly chaste Lord Archer vegetating (3, 3, 8, 12), the last four words forming the anagram THE OLD VICARAGE GRANTCHESTER.[7]
References
[edit]- ^ Brooke, Rupert (May 1912). The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. Café des Westerns, Berlin. Archived from the original on 2 March 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2009.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Davies, Caroline (12 June 2006). "Stands the clock at ten to three. Brooke unveiled by Lady T". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
- ^ a b "Old Vicarage, The, Grantchester, Cambridge, England". www.parksandgardens.org. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
- ^ Ridley, Jane. "Before Rupert and Jeffrey came". The Spectator. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
- ^ Cusick, James (17 July 1994). "The Archers entertain a few close friends..." The Independent. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ Historic England (30 August 1962). "Old Vicarage, Grantchester (1127790)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
- ^ Hoggart, Simon (26 November 2013). "Araucaria's last puzzle: crossword master dies". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 September 2016. Clue wording was corrected in online version
Further reading
[edit]- Archer, Mary (1989) – Rupert Brooke and the Old Vicarage (Cambridge: Silent Books, ISBN 978-1851830077)
- Archer, Mary (2012) – The Story of the Old Vicarage Grantchester (Cambridge: The Old Vicarage Press, ISBN 978-0-9572551-0-4)