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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St Wulfram's Church

St Wulfram's Church is called the Glory of Grantham and is dedicated to a 7th Century missionary. It is built on the site of a Saxon Christian church, which also may have been dedicated to St Wulfram.

A much larger church was built in the 1100s - a huge building for the time with a typical Norman tower at its centre. Six of the Norman pillars remain, as do traces of Norman window arches.

The whole building is a huge jigsaw of styles and materials but, remarkably, it looks as though it was built to a master design.

Following the Great Plague of 1348-49, building work slowed. Many skilled workers had died.

When the tower and spire were completed in 1300, it was then the tallest building in the country. Its 282ft spire is now the sixth highest.

By 1450, the general shape of the church was established. It was large enough to hold every person in the town.

Over the centuries, the interior altered. In 1548, many fittings, carvings and books were burned on a huge fire at the Market Cross after images were banned in churches.

In 1643 the Roundheads took panelling and pews for fires and threw the font, containing carvings of the Tudor rose out into the rain. It survived well weather-beaten. In the 1860s the interior was reworked and the decorative plaster stripped from the walls.

The 16th Century chained library, however, is one of the few remaining in England. Set up in 1598, it has the distinction of being the first provincial town library in the country to come under the control of the local authority, beating Norwich library by 10 years.

Francis Trigge, rector of Welbourn, alderman and mayor of the borough of Grantham, gave the original books.

He clearly did not want the books to become the private library of clerics and scholars, but they were not available to everyone as in the sense of today's public library. The door to the library over the south porch was kept locked and you had to apply to the alderman, the church's two vicars or to the schoolmaster to get a key.

Over the years the library was enlarged by donations. The philosopher Henry More, a former pupil of King's School, presented copies of his works in the late 1600s.
Of the books surviving, 83 still have their chains. The library includes a legal book printed in Venice in 1472.

The first record of an organ in the church is one given in 1640 by Dr Farmery, the chancellor of Lincoln. The Roundheads probably burned it.

The 1736 instrument was rebuilt and enlarged in 1869 and the present organ was built in 1906. In 1950, a leaking roof seriously damaged the organ. It was overhauled, 'revoiced' and rebuilt in 1972.

In 1991, St Wulfram's launched its AD2000 appeal, to raise £200,000 for improvements, including replacing the central heating pipes, putting in toilets, a coffee shop, an internal loop system for the hard of hearing, and repainting hatchments. It has had a glass porch installed.

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