1st May 2011
Sir Isaac Newton’s home,
Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire
We came to Europe to see and feel history and that’s exactly
what we’re getting. Our National Trust
memberships have opened a door to the most exquisite pieces of history,
culture, politics as well as ordinary life. Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s
birthhouse, boasts the most important bedroom and tree in physics!
Newton’s work on gravity and light…and so much more…was the
substance of so much high school education for me…and you, too, Neil I’m
sure! The apple tree in the yard below
his bedroom is the original - recent DNA testing confirms that it’s well over
350 years old and is located where Newton himself had noted - wow!
We were free to explore everywhere – the rent chair used by the
Lord to collect and deposit rent monies under lock and key, the sloping stool
at the kitchen table to ensure that those tanked on beer would fall forward -
onto the table - rather than backwards onto the stone floor, the protective
inscriptions in the various walls by doorways to ward off witches, the photos
of Einstein’s visit to pay homage in 1927…and much more. To think that Newton’s father was an
illiterate sheep farmer and died just before he was born…
