The FreePress

The Free Press occupies a small brick cottage on Prospect Row, tucked behind the Grafton Centre in the Petersfield area of Cambridge. The building was first licensed in 1834, when a home brewer named Sarah Horne began selling beer from her own kitchen; the pub took its name, in irony, from a short-lived temperance newspaper of the same era. Cambridge-born siblings Megan and Thomas Stepney now run it as a traditional freehouse, keeping the low beams, close-set tables and narrow bar largely unchanged. A wood-burning stove warms the main room through winter, and a small paved courtyard is used for outdoor drinking in summer. The pub serves a short, rotating list of cask ales and simple bar snacks, takes no bookings, and remains popular with local college and hospital staff as well as longtime regulars.