One of my last visits in England in August was Woolsthorpe Manor House which is Newton’s birthplace. We had to take the flight in the afternoon but we got up early and we drove until we arrived to this sacred place!
Photography by Carlos Dorce
Of course almost all the objects of the house are reproductions of the original ones which were used by Newton and his family. There also is a room dedicated to explaining his life and scientific contribution…
Photography by Carlos Dorce
…where it’s possible to find a lock of his hair:
Photography by Carlos Dorce
The room where he was born is absolutely reconstructed and a plaque remembers us the great date:
Photography by Carlos Dorce
There is the famous apple tree outside:
Photography by Carlos Dorce
A tree with a place in history
Woolsthorpe is the home of the Flower of Kent tree connected with Newton’s story of how he discovered the law of gravitation -a story told by Newton himself to William Stukeley, one of his biographers, in 1726:
Stukeley wrote:
“…after dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank tea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to himself: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: “why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it…”
The tree adquired a local reputation and after Newton’s death people would make the pilgrimage to the Manor House and to see the tree in the orchard. In 1820 the tree blew down after a storm. Sketches were made of it and the broken wood was used to make snuff boxes and small trinkets. Fortunately the tree remained rooted and re-grew strongly -this is the tree we have now.
There are descendants of the tree planted throughout the world, including at Trinity College, Cambridge, at the Massachussets Institute of Technology in the United States, and at Tianjin University in China. There are also several in this orchars, so that when the tree comes to the natural end of its life there will be descendants to carry on the story.
In another house there is a little exhibition about Newton’s experiments and discoveries:
Photography by Carlos Dorce
There is also little information about other contemporany scientists like Leibniz, Hooke or Flamsteed:
Photography by Carlos Dorce
Finally, there is a sundial in the orchard (of course!):
Photography by Carlos Dorce
Location: Woolsthorpe Manor (map)
THE MATHEMATICAL TOURIST 