Grantchester

Coordinates: 52°10′44″N 0°05′42″E / 52.179°N 0.095°E / 52.179; 0.095

Grantchester is a village on the River Cam or Granta in Cambridgeshire, England. It lies close to Cambridge.

Name

The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as Grantesete and Grauntsethe. It is also mentioned briefly in book IV, chapter 19 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. John de Grauntsete, a lawyer who had a successful career as a judge in Ireland, was born in Grantchester, c. 1270. The present name derives from the common Old English suffix -ceaster (variously developed as "-cester", "-caster", and -"chester"), used in names of forts or fortified cities throughout England.

Grantchester is sometimes identified as the Cair Grauth ("Fort Granta") listed in the History of the Britons among the 28 cities of Britain, but the Roman Duroliponte and subsequent major British and Saxon settlements in the area were at Castle Hill in Cambridge, whose Old English name was Grantabrycge. The confusion arises from the lower stretches of the Granta having been renamed the Cam after the city.

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester is a (mainly) light poem by the English Georgian poet Rupert Brooke (1897-1915), written in 1912.

Text

Source:The Complete Poems of Rupert Brooke (Sidwick & Jackson, Ltd, London, 1934), p.93.

Grantchester (TV series)

Grantchester is an ITV detective drama set in a 1950s Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester near Cambridge, where local Anglican vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton) develops a sideline in sleuthing—with the initially reluctant help of grumpy Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green). The series is based on The Grantchester Mysteries books written by James Runcie. The first television series is based on stories from the first of the books, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

Plot

Anglican priest (and former Scots Guards officer) Sidney Chambers and the overworked Detective Inspector Geordie Keating forge an unlikely partnership in solving crimes. Keating's gruff, methodical approach to policing complements Chambers' more intuitive techniques of coaxing information from witnesses and suspects.

Cast