Grantham
Grantham is a market town and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated on the banks of the River Witham and bounded to the west by the A1 road; it lies south of Lincoln and east of Nottingham. The population in 2016 was 44,580. The town is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of the South Kesteven District.
Grantham was the birthplace of the UK's former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The mathematician and scientist Isaac Newton was educated at the King's School. The town was the workplace of the UK's first warranted female police officer, Edith Smith, in 1914. The UK's first running diesel engine was made there in 1892 and the first tractor in 1896. Thomas Paine worked there as an excise officer in the 1760s. The villages of Manthorpe, Great Gonerby, Barrowby, Londonthorpe and Harlaxton form outlying suburbs of the town.
Etymology
Grantham's name is first attested in the Domesday Book ; its origin is not known with certainty. The ending -hām is Old English and means "homestead". The first part of the name may either be the personal name Granta or derive from the Old English word grand, implying either "Granta's homestead" or "homestead by gravel". In the early 20th century, the town's name was still pronounced Grant-m or Grahnt-m but, as people moved more frequently and became more literate, they began to derive the place name from its spelling and the pronunciation shifted to Granthum. This was already becoming common in 1920 and the later pronunciation is now the norm.Prehistory
Much of Grantham's early archaeology lies buried beneath the modern town, making it "difficult to unravel". Early prehistoric hunter-gatherers visited the area. Scattered Stone Age tools have been found, the earliest being a Palaeolithic axe on the Cherry Orchard Estate, dating between 40,000 and 150,000 years ago. The next earliest material consist of Mesolithic flints crafted 4,000 to 8,000 years ago and found round Gonerby Hill and the riverside in the south of the town. Neolithic people probably settled in the Grantham area for its proximity to the rivers and its fertile soils; material suggesting settlement in this period has been found at Great Ponton.Other scattered finds have been unearthed around the town. Remains of a Neolithic ritual site on the parish boundary between Harlaxton and Grantham are known from aerial photography. Bronze Age artefacts include pottery vessels, with human remains found in Little Gonerby, a Beaker pot, Beaker pottery sherds, cinerary urns and a food vessel, and a later cemetery at Belton Lane, but there is little direct evidence of Bronze Age settlement in the area of the modern town. Little is known about it in the Iron Age, though ditched enclosures and a field system of this date are known to lie off Gorse Lane.
Various Romano-British coins and pottery finds have emerged in Grantham; a burial and pottery from the 2nd century AD were uncovered off Trent Road in 1981. Small settlements or farmsteads from the period have been discerned on the hills overlooking Grantham from the east, and another has been found in Barrowby. There were probably Romano-British farmsteads on the site of the modern town, but the wet soils round the Mowbeck and flooding by the Witham probably made it hard for a larger settlement to grow there. Three kilometres to the south of the modern town, an important Roman site has been found at Saltersford, a crossing of the River Witham near Little Ponton.
Extensive finds and evidence of a significant Romano-British occupation have emerged in the vicinity since the 19th century; it has been tentatively identified by some scholars as Causennae, mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary, and sat at the place where the River Witham was crossed by the Salter's Way, a trade route connecting the salt-producing coastal and marshland regions with the Midlands. Salter's Way may also have crossed Ermine Street at Cold Harbour, 4 km south-east of Grantham. Saltersford may have been a small town with a market for local farmsteads and smaller settlements.
Medieval town
Origins
The local historian Michael Honeybone has "no doubt that the town of Grantham was established during Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain|Saxon times"; its name suggests it emerged in the earliest phase of Anglo-Saxon settlement, probably by the 7th century. The archaeological evidence for this is limited to finds indicating cemeteries at the sites of the Central School in Manthorpe and the junction of Bridge End Road and London Road in the town, and to small quantities of pottery sherds found on London Road, Belton Lane, Saltersford, New Somerby and Barrowby.The town's Saxon-period history is obscure and debated. The medievalist Sir Frank Stenton argued that Grantham probably emerged as an "important estate centre" before the Viking invasions in the 9th century and then functioned as a "minor local capital" in the Danelaw. By contrast, the historian David Roffe has argued that the town and its outlying soke were established in the 1040s or 1050s by Queen Edith and Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to strengthen their hands in the county at the expense of Siward, Earl of Northumbria. They may have also created St Wulfram's Church either as a new place of worship or as one revived from a possible earlier cell of Crowland Abbey.
Roffe argues that Siward's death in 1055 made Grantham's new role less important; as such, its soke only grew to its full extent after the Norman Conquest of England, when the king merged it with the soke of Great Ponton. Whatever its origins, by the time of the Domesday Book, Grantham was a town and royal manor; under its jurisdiction fell soke comprising lands in 16 villages. St Wulfram's served this extended parish area.
Royal manor
Grantham's Domesday entries show it as an estate centre, where Queen Edith had a hall before 1066. Twenty years later, the king had the manor; there were four mills and eight acres of meadow, but no arable land. The demesne appears to have been land now known as Earlesfield in Great Gonerby. There were 111 burgesses and 72 bordars, possibly labourers or craftsmen, indicating that Grantham was both a manor and a borough where the lord retained exclusive rights. It was a valuable asset, used by the king to reward loyal followers. By 1129, the manor and soke had been granted to Rabel de Tancarville, the king's chamberlain in Normandy. He sided against King Stephen during The Anarchy and his lands were probably forfeited on his death in 1140, although restored to his son William and confirmed in the early 1180s. The king retook the manor after William's heir Ralph de Tancarville failed to support him in Normandy.In 1205, the king granted it to his ally William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey. It was held as a life interest and reverted to the Crown on his widow's death in 1249, but regranted to his son the 6th earl in 1266. On his death in 1304, it reverted to the crown and was soon granted to Aymer de Valence, but had been regranted to Warenne's grandson, the 7th earl, by 1312. Four years later, it was resettled on the 7th earl for life with reversion to the crown. William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton was granted the reversion in 1337 and took seisin ten years later.
After his death, it reverted again to the Crown and in 1363 Edward II granted it to his son Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, through whose heirs it passed to Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, a major figure in the Wars of the Roses and rival of Henry VI. After Richard's death in 1460, Henry's Queen Margaret of Anjou attacked Grantham in 1461, but was defeated by Richard's son Edward later that year, who took the throne as Edward IV.
Two years later, Grantham was rewarded for loyalty to the Yorkist cause when the king granted the borough a charter of incorporation, as a self-governing council – the Corporation of Grantham headed by an Alderman – with various freedoms.
Economy and government
Its lords encouraged Grantham to expand as a commercial centre. By the late 11th century, it was an "important market town". The wool trade prospered, benefiting from its proximity to grazing lands on the Lincoln Heath. This wealth contributed towards the building of St Wulfram's Church. Wool shops were in Grantham in 1218 and Walkergate was recorded in 1257, indicating the presence of fullers, who played a role in processing wool. Cloth manufacture declined around this time, but wool continued to be produced for trading, primarily for export from Boston. Wool merchants are recorded from the town in the late 13th century. By this time, merchants from Italy, Saint-Omer and Amiens were active in the town.In 1269, the earl granted the town free tronage – the right to weigh wool without paying a toll. Less than 30 years later, its merchants were asked to send a representative to counsel the king. The wool trade boomed in the early 14th century; the town's merchants traded at least 980 sacks of wool at Boston during Edward II's reign, half from the de Chesterton family. In 1312, the earl granted the burgesses various freedoms and the right to elect a leader, codifying a longstanding informal arrangement. Later in the century, the king sought to raise revenues by taxing the wool trade; some Grantham merchants, including the wealthy Roger de Wollesthorpe, acted as creditors to the king.
England's falling population, continued taxation of wool exports and the growth of cloth exports and monopolisation led to the wool trade declining by the mid-15th century. Cloth exports became more important nationally. Grantham had a small cloth industry, but it could not compete with new fulling mills, which required fast-flowing water. Its merchants continued to trade in wool and it remained a dominant aspect of the town's economy. Other industries also existed during the Middle Ages; there is evidence of wine trading, brewing, parchment making, weaving, and other trades and crafts.
The bridging of the River Trent at Newark by the late 12th century realigned the Great North Road so that it passed through Grantham, bringing traffic to the town as an important stopping place and leading to the development of inns, such as The George and The Angel. By the 16th century, the economy was diverse. The largest sector was the leather trade, employing a quarter of the known workforce; distribution, food, drink and agricultural trades were also important. By that time, clothing and textiles each accounted for less than 10 per cent of the town's workers.