Wimpole Estate
The largest country house in Cambridgeshire, Wimpole is also a working estate – its Home Farm features shire horses, rare breeds and arable land. Wimpole Hall showcases the work of several architects, from John Soane’s dramatic Yellow Drawing Room, where Queen Victoria was received in 1843, to the impressive library designed by James Gibbs. The basements, with their Housekeeper’s Room and Dry Store, give a fascinating glimpse of life below stairs, while the Pleasure Grounds, walled garden, parterre and parkland promise a beautiful walk – followed by refreshments in the Old Rectory Restaurant, Farm Café or Stable Kitchen.
Grantchester
The idyllic village is enjoying renewed popularity thanks to the TV series, but its history stretches back to the Domesday Book, where it’s listed as “Grantesete”. There are ancient ties to Cambridge colleges, and, thanks to those, it’s reported to house the highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners in the world. Poets Rupert Brooke and Byron visited – the latter’s student swim giving the name Byron’s Pool to its nature reserve. It’s a tad chilly for swimming now, but do try the Boxing Day barrel rolling: teams race up and down the Coton Road with a wooden barrel, before repairing to the local pub.
Wicken Fen Nature Reserve
The first nature reserve to be cared for by the National Trust after a parcel of land was donated by Charles Rothschild in 1901, Wicken Fen offers a glimpse of Cambridgeshire’s lost fenlands. With huge skies, flowering meadows, verdant sedge and reedbeds and an abundance of wildlife, including rarely seen bitterns, hen harriers and water voles, the melancholic landscape can be explored from the safety of an all-weather boardwalk with wider areas being opened to the public by the Wicken Fen Vision project. Although the landscape feels wild, in truth it has been managed by humans for hundreds of years – the first recorded sedge harvest took place in 1414 and the practice takes place for thatching roofs to this day. Highland cattle and Konik ponies offer another picturesque way of managing the landscape and the last surviving wooden windpump of the Fens, restored in 1956, is a reminder, too, of a bygone way of life.
Fitzwilliam Museum
In 1816, the 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam bequeathed to the University of Cambridge his vast library and art collection, plus £100,000 to erect a museum to house them. George Basevi designed the Founder’s Building, which opened in 1848, and it’s now – in its bicentennial year – recognized as one of the finest small museums in Europe. The collection has grown through gift, bequest and purchase, adding to an already impressive offering. Highlights include masterpieces by Titian, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Turner, Monet and Renoir, plus Japanese woodblocks, 500 folio albums of engravings, 130 medieval manuscripts, and autograph music by Handel and Purcell.
