Town in Lincolnshire, England

Grantham

A pub with a living beehive outside, a biscuit-hard gingerbread, a speed record on the doorstep and a prime minister's grocery shop: Grantham packs in a lot.

Key information

County: Lincolnshire
Nation: England
Known for: Margaret Thatcher's birthplace, Isaac Newton's school days, Grantham gingerbread and the Mallard speed record nearby
What locals are called: Granthamians
Famous people: Margaret Thatcher, Isaac Newton (schooled here), Edith Smith
Football clubs: Grantham Town (the Gingerbreads)

About Grantham

The pub with a beehive outside

Start on Castlegate, where the Beehive Inn has a real colony of bees living in a lime tree by the front door. The hive has been there since the 1830s at least, and the pub's sign is the living hive itself, mounted in the tree outside, which makes it one of the very few in Britain to be so literal. The pub's motto is a warning: "Stop traveller, this wondrous sign explore, and say when thou hast viewed it o'er, Grantham, now two rarities are thine, a lofty steeple and a living sign." The steeple in question belongs to St Wulfram's, which is just down the road. It's a fine introduction to a town that likes its oddities kept going.

A steeple, a chained library and a school Newton hated leaving

St Wulfram's Church has a spire of about 86 metres, which puts it among the tallest on any parish church in England. Climb above the south porch and you'll find the Francis Trigge Chained Library, founded in 1598 and one of the earliest publicly accessible reference libraries in England. Books were read on the spot, and chained to the shelves so that no one could walk off with them. A short stroll away is The King's School, where the young Isaac Newton studied in the 1650s while living with an apothecary in the town. A statue of him stands on St Peter's Hill. Stories of his boyhood experiments with windmills and sundials cluster around the area, and the school proudly counts him as its most famous pupil. Grantham also has a medieval coaching inn, the Angel and Royal, whose stone front dates back to the 1400s. Its past includes a reputed visit from King Richard III in 1483.

The grocer's daughter who ran the country

Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in 1925 and grew up above her father Alfred's grocery shop on North Parade. Alfred was a Methodist lay preacher, a local councillor and later the town's mayor, and the shop shaped her views on thrift and hard work. She went on to become the UK's first woman prime minister in 1979, serving until 1990. Grantham's feelings about her have always been mixed. When a bronze statue of her was finally put up in the town in 2022, after earlier plans had been turned down elsewhere, it was an event in itself, and it quickly needed extra security. The town's museum covers her childhood and local life, so you can see the Grantham that she described in her memoirs.

Firsts, fast trains and the Dambusters' planners

In 1915 Grantham appointed Edith Smith, the first woman in Britain with full police powers of arrest. She was brought in to keep order around the huge army camp at Belton Park during the First World War, and kept an eye on the young women who flocked there. The railway made the town. The East Coast Main Line runs straight through, and just to the south, on Stoke Bank, the streamlined steam locomotive Mallard hit 126 mph on 3 July 1938. It remains the world record for steam. It was designed by Nigel Gresley, and Grantham station was part of the great line's story. No. 5 Group of Bomber Command had its headquarters at St Vincent's in Grantham from 1937 to 1943, and its staff helped plan the Dambusters raid of 1943.

Gingerbread, engines and the Gingerbreads

Grantham gingerbread isn't soft and sticky: it's pale, crisp and more like a biscuit. Local tradition says baker William Eggleston created it by accident in 1740, when he mixed up ingredients while making Grantham whetstones, a hard biscuit. It's still sold in the town. The football club nods to it directly. Grantham Town are known as the Gingerbreads. The town also has a serious engineering past. Richard Hornsby & Sons built steam engines and farm machinery here, and developed tracked tractors that helped inspire the tank. The Grantham Canal, opened in 1797, linked the town with the River Trent near Nottingham, chiefly to bring Nottinghamshire coal to Grantham. Today it is a peaceful route for walkers and anglers. With Belvoir Castle and Belton House both close by, Grantham is a handy gateway to some of the finest country houses in the East Midlands.