A Son of the Rock

After Newmarket we headed just south-east of Cambridge to the not very well sign-posted village of Grantchester.

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

As you can see from the church clock in the photo below we arrived an hour too early.

I looked for the Old Vicarage but even though there was a Vicarage Lane the houses’ identities were being closely guarded. Jeffrey Archer (yes, Jeffrey Archer) bought the Old Vicarage in the 1980s. If he still lives there perhaps it’s a blessing I didn’t find it.

I did find a new(er) vicarage right beside the church. Hardly iconic.

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I was, however, delighted to see the War Memorial in the churchyard of St Andrew and St Mary.

I was even more delighted to see Rupert Brooke’s name there.

Brooke greeted the Great War with some enthusiasm, in sonnets such as Now, God Be Thanked Who Has Matched Us With His Hour and The Soldier.

Brooke didn’t die in battle. He developed sepsis from a mosquito bite on his way to Gallipoli and was buried on the island of Skyros in Greece. So some corner of a foreign field is forever, if not England, then at least Grantchester.

He was a casualty of the war, though, as he would not have been in the Aegean but for that.

Passing the Green Man pub I saw a sign saying “Grantchester Meadows.” I followed the path down and took this photo.

This was because Grantchester has another famous son, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. The song Grantchester Meadows from the 1969 album Ummagumma, though written and performed by Roger Waters rather than Gilmour, was, I presume, inspired by this.

Pink Floyd: Grantchester Meadows