The Orchard (tea room)

Blue plaque commemorating poet Rupert Brook at Orchard House and the Old Vicarage. Unveiled 25 April 2015.

The Orchard in blossom, c. 1910.

The Orchard, May 2007

The Orchard is a tea room and tea garden in Grantchester, near Cambridge, serving morning coffee, lunches and afternoon teas. Since opening in 1897, it has been a popular retreat for Cambridge students, teachers and tourists, as well as locals, with many famous names among its patrons. The Orchard is open every day of the year (with the exception of some days around Christmas) from 9:30 to 17:30 in winter and 19:00 in summer, and can be reached both by road and punt. There is a museum at the premises dedicated to the poet Rupert Brooke.

History

The history of The Orchard started in 1897 (the orchard itself was first planted in 1868) when a group of Cambridge students asked the landlady, Mrs Stevenson of Orchard House, if they could take their tea in the orchard rather than on the front lawn as the custom was. This practice soon became the norm, and the place grew in popularity. The next phase in the history of The Orchard began when the poet Rupert Brooke took up lodging in the house in 1909. A graduate student of great popularity in the university community at the time, Brooke soon attracted a great following at the place, among them Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, Bertrand Russell, Augustus John, and Ludwig Wittgenstein – the so-called Grantchester Group, or the neo-pagans as Woolf called them. Brooke later lodged in a neighbouring house, the Old Vicarage (now owned by Cambridge scientist Mary Archer and her husband, Jeffrey Archer) and immortalised both houses in his poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. Written while Brooke was in Berlin in 1912, the poem ends with the famous lines:

“

Stands the church clock at ten-to-three? And is there honey still for tea?

”

Subsequently, the ownership of Orchard House and the tea room passed to Robin Callan, originator of the Callan Method for the study of English by non-native speakers.

Famous patrons

Rupert Brooke Virginia Woolf John Maynard Keynes E. M. Forster Bertrand Russell Augustus John Ludwig Wittgenstein A. N. Whitehead G. M. Trevelyan Stephen Hawking James D. Watson Francis Crick Alan Turing Frank Whittle Christopher Cockerell Ernest Rutherford Christopher Isherwood J. B. Priestley Lytton Strachey A. E. Housman Edward Thomas James Elroy Flecker

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Jeffrey Archer Salman Rushdie A. A. Milne Leslie Charteris J. G. Ballard John Betjeman James Hilton King George VI Prince Charles Robert Runcie David Owen Jawaharlal Nehru George Mallory Cecil Beaton James Mason Herbert Lom Robert Donat Flora Robson Emma Thompson John Cleese Peter Cook

Stephen Fry Hugh Laurie Griff Rhys Jones Eric Idle Jonathan Miller Jimmy Edwards Tim Rice Clive James David Frost David Attenborough Mary Archer Germaine Greer Alistair Cooke Guy Burgess Kim Philby Anthony Blunt Donald Maclean John Cairncross Klaus Fuchs George Blake Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Craig Reynolds Sarah O'Neill

External links

• Home page
• Brooke's The Old Vicarage, Grantchester on Wikisource

Coordinates: 52°10′39″N 0°05′47″E / 52.1774°N 0.0965°E