It’s not every day you see a rock star in a quaint English country village, but in this corner of the country you might see more than most because it also hosts an amazing hidden music festival.
Abbots Ripton, in Cambridgeshire, is packed with rural charm, thatched cottages and a busy village hall calendar with lots of lovely countryside activities.
But it’s also the unlikely location for a music festival which has seen artists as famous as Florence and the Machine, Blondie, The Gorillaz and Jarvis Cocker perform.
The Secret Garden Party has been running for more than two decades at Abbots Ripton Estate, one of the largest private estates in the country with 400 acres of woodland.
The event is the reason experience-ranking site Muddy Stilettos, which rates ‘the best food, walks, boutiques, day trips, hotels, interiors and events for smart, fun-loving women living outside London’, has named Abbots Ripton as one of the best places to live in 2025.
CambridgeLive reports this year, the festival was split up into several days, with a few days dedicated to “going back to our roots” with live and electronic music, a few days dedicated to “wholesome family camping” including “activities for feral kids”, and an invite-only 36-hour rave.
During the rest of the year, “feral” children and partying adults are replaced with 68 species of breeding birds in the woodlands of Abbots Ripton Estate.
These include marsh tits, a species of conservation concern due to a greater than 50 per cent decline in the UK population over the last 25 years.
On certain days throughout the year, locals or visitors can head inside the grand Abbots Ripton Hall on the estate or wander around the gardens, which boast more than 2,000 different type of plant and 60 oak trees.
The estate is also home to a much-loved pub, the fifteenth-century The Elm. Complete with a thatched roof and a roaring fire, this spot offers seasonal food cooked using produce from local suppliers.
Customer reviews listed on Google attest to the quality of the food at the pub, with one person describing their meal as “absolutely delicious” and its presentation as “impeccable”. The Elm has an average rating of 4.5 stars out of five, from 542 commenters.
For those days when locals choose to dine at home rather than at The Elm, Abbots Ripton has just one village store. All the essentials can be found here but, for more choice, villagers can head to Huntingdon, which is a ten-minute car journey.
Huntingdon has direct trains to London, which typically take just under 50 minutes to get there. Abbots Ripton is also thirty minutes away from both Cambridge and Peterborough by car.
House prices in Abbots Ripton had an overall average price of £315,000 over the last year, according to the property site RightMove.
