The Orchard (tea room)

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 year-round, and is most pleasantly approached by punt along the River Cam, or along the footpath and cycleway through the Grantchester Meadows.

By the 1890s the adjoining house and its grounds were in the hands of a Mrs Stevenson, who served tea to lodgers and visitors on the front garden.

A handsome young man of great charisma and talent, 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.

Written while Brooke was in Berlin in 1912, the poem ends with the 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.