Photo of the old weir swept away in 1947 Cambridgeshire Collection

Byron’s Pool, Trumpington

Byron's Pool is the millpool from a former Trumpington Mill

Byron’s Pool is the former millpond of Trumpington Mill, which is the site of the Reeve’s tale by Chaucer. The mill disappeared many years ago. The current weir was built after the floods of 1947. A stream to allow fish to pass upstream was added after 2000. Lord Byron is reputed to have swum there when a student at Cambridge, and Rupert Brooke when staying at the Old Rectory in Grantchester.

The area around Byron’s Pool is now a Local Nature Reserve, looked after by Cambridge City Council.

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In 2022 AN sent this email:

From the age of 10 myself and other boys from Trumpington used to fish in the Byron pool. I can just remember the old wooden weir from where my parents used to go there for picnics. [I was]  aged 5.   It was a lovely place then, with gravely shallows to walk across to the other side to fish, or we used to shuffle carefully across the existing concrete weir when it was first built  to the other side!  We also fished in the Grantchester Meadows,  and I think I must have climbed, with others, just about every tree in Trumpington park!   Happy days before X-boxes and Play Stations!

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