Stories of a City: Celebrating Cambridge's commons – and their cows

Cambridge novelist Susan Grossey takes us to a different city site each month and tells us their stories - past, present and personal. This month, we’re visiting the cows on the commons

Last year, the moo-d in Cambridge was disturbed by some udderly awful news: council budget cuts might mean that cows would no longer be able to graze on our riverside commons. For centuries, gentle (but surprisingly large) russet and white cows have been brought into town between April and October to munch on the lush grass of Midsummer Common, Stourbridge Common, Coe Fen, Lammas Land and (confusingly) Sheep’s Green.

It’s all to do with the ancient tradition of ‘commons grazing’, whereby common land can be accessed by anyone and used – for example – to graze cattle. The practice disappeared from much of the country during the Industrial Revolution, but wonderful, quirky Cambridge has retained it. It’s gone a bit high-tech, in that the cows now wear tracking devices (a case of “where now, brown cow”, perhaps) but the fact remains that cows are not the smartest of animals. When they wander into the river or get stuck in a cattlegrid, a council-funded animal rescuer – a pinder – is called in. And the council was wondering whether it could afford to keep the pinders… Petitions were raised, consultations were undertaken, and we residents crossed our fingers.

And so it was that I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I cycled across Coe Fen last week and there they were – the cows are back! Considering how much beef is eaten around the world (and I don’t want to distress you, but all the Cambridge cows are destined for the dining table…) most people are extremely unfamiliar with cows. We can recognise them from the train window, but actually getting up close to one, well, that’s special. I should say that it’s not wise to get close enough to touch them, as they are not meant for petting – and a cow knocking you over and walking on you would bring a tear to your eye. But I love seeing the reaction of visitors when they cross the bridge onto Midsummer Common or take their plastic pint from the Anchor onto Laundress Green – and find themselves in the middle of a herd of cows.

I have a friend who is a dairy farmer, and he maintains that cows are the nosiest animal in the world. He demonstrates this by putting an empty bucket in the middle of his farmyard and standing staring into it. Within minutes, his entire herd will be jostling to get a look into the bucket, so desperate are they to know what’s going on. And Cambridge’s cows live up to the hype: sit on a cow-occupied green space with your picnic and it’s like a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps: close your eyes for a minute and open them again, and magically every cow in sight will have moved a few yards closer to you.

It’s a privilege and a delight to have the countryside brought into the city, but we residents do have to make some accommodations. Cows are no respecters of cycle paths, and in bike-versus-cow discussions about right of way, two wheels always loses to four legs. And you have to get pretty nifty about steering around the evidence of the cows’ healthy diet: cow poo spraying up your back is best avoided. But for those who care about food miles and sustainability of the food chain, there is little to beat the Cambridge cow: you can admire them all summer, and buy your CamCattle meat from the market in the autumn. You herd it here first.

Susan Grossey is the author of many historical crime novels, including the Hardiman books, set in Cambridge in the 1820s. The second in this series – Sizar – was published in December 2024. See susangrossey.com

Illustrated by Lucy Jones of Poppet Pics. For more about Lucy and her work, follow @lucyjonespoppetpics on Instagram.