The little hamlet of Woolsthorpe is some seven miles south
of Grantham in Lincolnshire and is not to be confused with Woolsthorpe by Belvoir. In the seventeenth century Woolsthorpe Manor was a modest manor-house with two or three small farms and some thatched cottaces.
The nearest church was in Colsterworth about half a mile
away eastwards. The settlement lies in the beautiful valley of Witham and would have stayed a place of peaceful obscurity if Isaac Newton had not chanced to be born there. |
The Manor House, is a moderately sized building of grey stone, it faces west and near an orchard which,
containing apple trees, is supposed to be the inspiration for Isaac in his discovery of the law of gravitation. The rooms on the first floor are fairly large with low ceilings and the flooring is of stone. There is a steep and narrow stairway which leads up to the bedrooms on the second floor. The room where Newton is said to have been born is on the left and there is a drawing of an apple tree on the wall. Another room which is on the right is thought to have been his bedroom and his study was in a partitioned off corner. |
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day, 1642,
the son of Isaac, a farmer who had died three months before his birth. He had been conceived illegitimately and he had tried to hide this fact by altering the date of his parents marriage. He had an unpromising start in life in that he was not only a posthumous child but he was also prematurely born and so frail that he was not expected to live beyond a few hours. For some time he had to wear a bolster around his neck as he was too weak to hold his head upright. |
The paternal side of Newtons family did not show any unusual ability and the only description of his
father is that he "was a wild, extravagant and weak man. Looking at his maternal side, his mother, Hannah, had a fine intellect and she greatly favoured her son - their relationship being extremely affectionate. Hannah remarried a few years after Isaac was born and went to live with her new husband the Reverend Smith at North Witham a mile away. Isaac was left to be brought up by his Grandmother Ascough, and he only returned to his mother when his step-father the Reverand Smith had died. He had had a difficult relationship with his stepfather to the point of threatening them with burning them and the house around them. When he was 12 years of age he was sent to Grantham grammar school but he did poorly there at first, and although improving later, he was at the age of 17 put to work on the family farm. This, however, did not suit him and he was a year later sent to Trinity College in Cambridge and so began his life which was to immortalise him as the founder of modern physics and leave the modern world with a debt to his genius |
Colsterworth Registers
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This page last modified on Wednesday, June 01, 2005
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