Cambridge Area Guides
Guides to eight Cambridge neighbourhoods and nearby villages, with the housing, heritage and gas-supply details that shape a heat pump installation in each.
Last reviewed: 2 October 2026
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One planning service
Greater Cambridge Shared Planning handles applications for both Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire.
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Heritage almost everywhere
most of our area guides include at least one conservation area, from Newnham Croft to Great Shelford.
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Villages off the gas grid
some homes around Grantchester and Great Shelford use oil or LPG and can claim £9,000 until March 2027.
Neighbourhoods and villages
Cambridge's neighbourhoods range from tight Victorian terraces around Mill Road to riverside villas, planned suburbs like De Freville and big new developments at Trumpington. Just outside the city, villages such as Grantchester and Great Shelford mix historic cores with homes still heated by oil.
For a heat pump, that means very different starting points: a small rear yard and a noise calculation in Romsey, listed building consent in parts of Trumpington, or an oil tank to remove in Great Shelford. The guides below take each in turn.
Newnham
CB3, Cambridge City. Cambridge's premier western affluent suburb with the Newnham Croft CA (1998) covering late-Victorian/Edwardian artisan terraces. Solid-wall stock predominates; average house price £1.1m (Rightmove 2024–2026).
Read the Newnham guide →Trumpington
CB2, Cambridge City. Layered ward with a medieval village core (Trumpington Hall + Anstey Hall Grade II*, Church of St Mary and St Michael Grade I) onto the post-2010 Trumpington Meadows new-build expansion. CA designations 1969 + 1998 + 2010.
Read the Trumpington guide →Chesterton
CB4, Cambridge City. North Cambridge across East + West Chesterton wards (combined 18,620 residents) with two adjacent 1969 CAs (Chesterton CA + Ferry Lane CA, both amended 2009). Chesterton Tower Grade II* (14th-century anchorite cell) and Chesterton Hall anchor the heritage.
Read the Chesterton guide →Romsey
CB1, Cambridge City. Dense Victorian/Edwardian terraced ward east of the city centre. Romsey Town was added as a 2011 extension to the Mill Road and St Matthew's Conservation Area — heritage planning applies on the western terraces.
Read the Romsey guide →Riverside
CB5, Cambridge City. South-bank River Cam frontage within Abbey ward (the ward's affluent enclave). The Riverside and Stourbridge Common CA was carved out of original CA No. 1 in 2018. Frontage £990k+ (Rightmove).
Read the Riverside guide →De Freville
CB4, Cambridge City. Victorian planned-suburb sub-area of West Chesterton with the De Freville CA (designated 2009, 2020 appraisal). Homogeneous late-Victorian residential character — strong heritage retrofit profile.
Read the De Freville guide →Grantchester
CB3, South Cambridgeshire. Premier village 2 miles south of Cambridge (parish pop 536). Grantchester CA designated 1975; Manor Farmhouse Grade II* (15th-century). Long-standing concentration of Cambridge academics and writers (Russell, Keynes, Woolf, Brooke historically).
Read the Grantchester guide →Great Shelford
CB22, South Cambridgeshire. Affluent village south of Cambridge (parish pop 4,534) with Great Shelford CA designated 2007 and a neighbourhood plan in force. Grade I church (St Mary's, medieval). Average house price £873k (Rightmove, +23% YoY).
Read the Great Shelford guide →Somewhere else near Cambridge?
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