Local events

Ten little gems
Did you know that piped water for the town was provided by the Greyfriars monks in 1314?... More

Markets, fairs, carnivals
The town has had a market for more than 1,000 years, and from 1484 to 1634 it actually had two... More

Town's history

First footings
About 4,000 years ago farmers used bronze tools to clear woods between the Witham and Mowbeck... More

Royal charter
Grantham 'officially' became a town on March 8, 1463, under a Royal Charter granted by Edward IV... More

Wool and iron
Agriculture played a great role in the early centuries of Grantham. The fertile land produced crops... More

People and places

St Wulfram's Church
Built in the 1100s on the site of a Saxon church, St Wulfram's is known as the Glory of Grantham... More

Margaret Thatcher
Britain's first woman Prime Minister was born on October 13, 1925, above a shop at 1 North Parade... More

King's School
King's School, possibly once St Wulfram's Church song school, is one of the oldest in the country... More

Sir Isaac Newton
Newton's lifetime of discoveries started at King's School, Grantham where he was head boy... More

Grantham Journal

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Sir Isaac Newton

When astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon in 1969 with the words "One small step for man ..." he might have added "and thank you, Mr Newton".

It was Isaac Newton's great discoveries and mathematics that were the basis of the science that enabled man to travel in space.

But it might never have happened. Newton, born on Christmas day, 1642, at Woolsthorpe Manor, near Colsterworth, was such a weak child he was not expected to live.

His father, also called Isaac, was dead, and his mother Hanna married the rector of North Witham. Newton was brought up by his grandmother.

He went to dame schools in Skillington and Stoke before becoming a pupil of King's School, Grantham, in 1654. He lodged with Mr Clark at a chemist's shop next to The George hotel.

Not much is known about his time at King's, although he became head boy. His name can be seen carved in a windowsill in what is now called the Old School.

Newton made working models of things like water clocks and a water mill 'powered' by a mouse. One of his sundials can be seen in Colsterworth Church.

His mother's husband died and she returned to Woolsthorpe Manor. Newton had to leave school to help on the farm. He wasn't very good at it, and returned to school.

In 1661 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree.

He returned to Woolsthorpe in 1665 to escape the Plague. He made most of his great discoveries during the next two years.

It was at Woolsthorpe that an apple falling from a tree led to his Law of Universal Gravitation. The tree blew down in a storm in 1820. Cuttings from it were grafted on to tees in Belton Park. A sapling from one was planted at Woolsthorpe.

Newton worked out laws of mathematics, and about the motion of the planets, and force which were put into a book called the Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) written in Latin and published in 1687. He studied light and colour and chemistry and also produced the first reflecting telescope.

He returned to Cambridge where he was awarded his Master of Arts degree and become a professor of mathematics. Briefly he was Member of Parliament for the University and became Master of the Mint. He became president of the Royal Society in 1703 and was knighted in 1705.

He never married and planned to retire to Grantham House, in Castlegate, but he became ill in old age and stayed in London. He died on March 20, 1727, aged 85, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

A bronze statue of him, made from Russian cannon captured in the Crimean War, was put up on St Peter's Hill, Grantham, in 1858.

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