Eight free openings across the district, including Denny Abbey, where a family ticket normally costs £29. Cottenham's All Saints open day has been cancelled.
Eight buildings and sites across South Cambridgeshire open free during Heritage Open Days, which runs from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 September 2026. (Heritage Open Days)
A ninth South Cambridgeshire entry, the All Saints Cottenham open day on 19 September, has been cancelled. The festival listing still appears on its area page, but the entry itself now carries the note: “This event has unfortunately had to be cancelled due to on-going works”. (Heritage Open Days, All Saints Cottenham)
There is a second thing worth knowing before you plan a day out. The festival’s own printable list for South Cambridgeshire carries only five of the nine local entries. (Heritage Open Days, South Cambridgeshire area list) The other four, at Landbeach, Papworth St Agnes, Coton and Harlton, are filed on the wider Cambridgeshire list instead. Anyone using the district page alone would miss them.
Every South Cambridgeshire opening
Nothing in the district is open between Monday 14 and Friday 18 September. All eight are on the festival’s two weekends, plus the Friday it opens.
Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September, 10am to 1.30pm: Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Lord’s Bridge
A tour of the observatory site off the Cambridge Road at Harlton, CB23 1EX, covering the One-Mile Telescope, the 5km Ryle Telescope and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager, with a look inside some of the control rooms. It starts with a 15 minute introduction at the Station House.
Booking is required, capped at 35 people, and part of the tour is done by car, so visitors may be asked to car share. The organisers say public transport to the site is limited and it cannot be walked from the city. Free tickets were still on sale on Saturday 30 August. (Heritage Open Days; Eventbrite)
Saturday 12 September, 10am to 4pm: the Hinkledux churches, Hinxton, Ickleton and Duxford
Three medieval churches open together: St Mary and St John’s at Hinxton (CB10 1RS), St Mary Magdalene at Ickleton (CB10 1SL) and St Peter’s at Duxford (CB22 4RJ). Visitors can chime the bells, see a church clock working, and look through parish records of christenings, weddings and burials.
One caveat from the organisers: conservation work is under way on the Ickleton wall paintings, so they will be largely hidden behind scaffolding. Hinxton has a small car park; the other two are on-street parking only. No booking needed. (Heritage Open Days)
Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September: Art in the Barn, Landbeach Tithe Barn
An exhibition by local artists inside the medieval thatched tithe barn at 2A Waterbeach Road, Landbeach, CB25 9FA, with crafts and activities for children and light refreshments. The barn was restored in 2019; the listing says only around 200 tithe barns survive in the UK.
Check the time before you set off. The listing’s own timings panel gives 10am to 5pm on both days, while the description on the same page says 10am to 3pm. Free parking, no booking. (Heritage Open Days)
Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September, 10am to 4pm: “150 Years Ago in The Mordens”, Guilden Morden
A local history exhibition at the Congregational Chapel, 10 Pound Green, Guilden Morden, SG8 0JZ, on life in Guilden Morden and Steeple Morden in the 1870s. It has a table-top map of the villages marked with trades and occupations, biographies of the people who did them, 1871 census details, newspaper extracts and period artefacts. A local school choir performs music from the era on one of the days.
Note the address on the festival site reads “Royston, Hertfordshire”. That is the postal town: Guilden Morden is in South Cambridgeshire. The same exhibition runs again at Steeple Morden Village Hall on Hay Street, SG8 0PD, on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September, 10am to 4pm, which is after the festival ends. No booking. (Heritage Open Days)
Saturday 12, Sunday 13, Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September: Cambridge American Cemetery, Coton
The most repeated opening in the district. A walking tour of the cemetery on Madingley Road, Coton, CB23 7PH, three times a day on each of the four dates, at 10am, midday and 2.30pm, running an hour each. It sets out to answer the question staff are asked most often: why is there an American cemetery in a field outside Cambridge?
Booking is required and each tour is capped at 20 people. The tour goes ahead in any weather. Free tickets were still on sale on Saturday 30 August. (Heritage Open Days; Eventbrite)
Saturday 19 September, 10.30am to 4.30pm: Cottenham Dissenters’ Cemetery
The Nonconformist burial ground on Lambs Lane, CB24 8TB, opened on 12 June 1845 and has around 4,000 people recorded in its register. Trustees will be on hand with displays on the war graves, the meaning of Victorian grave symbols and the cemetery’s historic funeral bier, and will help visitors looking for a particular grave. Cottenham Village Society is joining them.
There are no toilets and no refreshments on site. The organisers warn that Rampton Road in Cottenham is closed and tell visitors to come along the High Street instead; parking is limited to the cemetery layby and Harlestones Road, with cycle racks at the village hall. No booking. (Heritage Open Days)
Saturday 19 September, 10am to 4pm: Denny Abbey and the Farmland Museum, Waterbeach
The best-value opening of the nine. The site off the A10 north of Waterbeach, CB25 9PQ, normally charges £9.50 an adult, £6.50 a child aged 5 to 17 and £29.00 for a family of two adults and up to three children. (Denny Abbey and the Farmland Museum, admission prices) For this one day, admission is free to everyone.
The abbey housed Benedictine monks, Knights Templar and Franciscan nuns before becoming a farmhouse, and the museum in its grounds holds farming and domestic objects from this part of the Fens. The Docky Box Café is open. No booking. (Heritage Open Days)
Sunday 20 September, 11am to 2pm: St John the Baptist, Papworth St Agnes
A church on a medieval site, rebuilt in the 19th century: the tower dates from 1848 and the rest from 1854. Points to look for are the chequerboard masonry on the outside walls, the lion grotesques on the tower, and the Noah’s Ark stained glass, which was salvaged from the church by the Stained Glass Museum at Ely and returned in 1993. Tea and coffee inside. The path up to the church is stone gravel. No booking. (Heritage Open Days)
What it means for you
Six of the eight need no booking at all, so they are a straightforward turn-up-and-walk-in. The two that do need booking, the Mullard observatory tour and the American Cemetery walk, are also the two smallest, capped at 35 and 20 places, and both are run by Open Cambridge rather than a village group.
If you are choosing one day, Saturday 12 September is the fullest, with five of the eight open. If you are choosing one visit on cost, it is Denny Abbey on Saturday 19 September, which saves a family of five the £29.00 they would otherwise pay.
Two practical points. The festival tells visitors to check individual entries for last-minute changes before setting out, and the cancelled Cottenham open day is the reason why. And several of these sites are down single-track village lanes with limited parking, so check our South Cambs roadworks and travel page before you drive, and our train times to London and Cambridge page if you would rather not.
More free and low-cost days out across the district are on our things to do in South Cambridgeshire page.
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