Archer's fall: Little sympathy to be found in Cambridgeshire home

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Drinkers in the Blue Ball Inn just yards from the Old Vicarage in Granchester had little sympathy on Friday for its absent owner. As one man put it: "Jeffrey Archer got all he deserved."

The regulars crowded around the bar in the Cambridgeshire village had further reason for celebration as they shared out the proceeds of a sweepstake on the length of the peer's prison sentence.

But as the £110 kitty was collected by its joint winners, there was little sign of regret that the glitterati-strewn Archer garden parties and social gatherings were now a thing of the past.

Len Baynes, 63, ironically one of the £55 sweepstake beneficiaries at the Blue Ball Inn of Lord Archer's misfortune, said: "I wasn't surprised at the verdict. [He] has been a man of power and riches and he has shown the arrogance of men who have power and riches.

"He shows complete disdain for the British justice system and he got all he deserved. And I can assure you there will be no tears shed in this village."

Around the corner, the gates to the Old Vicarage were being watched by a large group of photographers and reporters awaiting a glimpse of the Archer family. They were rewarded only by a sighting of Lord Archer's son William as he unloaded packages from a white van. He made no comment.

Indicating that the Archers were wont to stay behind the gates of their 17th-century vicarage even when there was no media pack outside, Mr Baynes said: "No one knows him enough to like him or dislike him."

Lord Archer and his wife, Mary, moved into their Cambridgeshire home overlooking the banks of the Cam with its traffic of punting Cambridge University students in 1979.

The property had famously been the home of the war poet Rupert Brooke in 1910 while he was an undergraduate at the university.

Indeed, Brooke's verse had uncanny relevance for the 21st-century vicarage owner, who installed a swimming pool in the property only to find himself residing in HMP Belmarsh.

In his 1912 poem "The Old Vicarage", Brooke wrote: "In Grantchester, in Grantchester... / Still in the dawnlit waters cool/ His Lordship swims his pool; / And tries the strokes, essays the tricks."

The results of Lord Archer's trickery were made public on Thursday afternoon in Court 8 of the Old Bailey, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for a conspiracy hatched far away from the quiet life of Grantchester.