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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Grantham Journal

On February 1, 1854, the Grantham Journal of Useful, Instructive and Entertaining Knowledge and Monthly Advertiser went on sale. It cost one penny (0.4p).

It was the brainchild of the town's main bookseller John Rogers, head of the firm of Rogers and Son in Walkergate (Westgate).

In the beginning the Journal was a monthly paper of only four pages, with three columns of print on each page.

The first paper coincided with the State Opening of Parliament by Queen Victoria. Almost the whole of the front page was her speech.

There wasn't any Grantham news in the paper. Other stories included The Uses of Insurance, A sketch of the Pitcairn Islands, a column for housewives and the invention of a new type of wheelbarrow.

The front page was quickly turned over to advertising. It was 1941 before there was news on the front page again.

The Journal was a success. After four months it was selling 1,600 copies a month and by the end of 1854, 2,000 copies with 12 pages.

Ownership passed to Joseph Rogers, who renamed the paper the Grantham Journal and Mercantile Advertiser. On June 15, 1855, the Journal became a weekly. It had the second largest circulation of newspapers published in Lincolnshire.

In 1862, the paper was bought by Yorkshireman Henry Escritt, co-founder of the firm of Escritt and Barrell on St Peter's Hill. In 1876, the Journal moved to High Street, into the former Mail Hotel, closed four years earlier.

In 1897, Henry Escritt gave the Journal to his only son, but he took control again when his son died in 1910. He then made it a limited company.

Members of the Escritt family served on the board of directors for the next 50 years.
At the turn of the century the Journal print room employed a dozen men. One of them Tom Pratt, always wore a hat, like a chef's, made from a Journal.

Printing the paper began at lunchtime on Friday and continued until the early hours of Saturday morning. It wasn't published on a Friday until shortly after the start of the Second World War.

By 1970, the Journal had editions for Bourne, Melton Mowbray and Oakham.The paper was printed by hot metal process at the Journal's High Street office until 1973. then the printing was done at Newark.

The Journal remained a family company until 1984, when it was bought by EMAP.

The Journal is an award-winning paper. It is part of Welland Valley Newspapers owned by Johnston Publishing. Over 20,000 copies of the paper, regularly containing almost 100 pages, are sold each week.

In its 147-year history the Journal has had only 10 editors.

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