Sir Isaac Newton and Grannies Bowl

Had a jolly around Lincolnshire this week and visited Woolsthorpe Manor, the birthplace and family home of Sir Isaac Newton. According to the old Julian calendar he was born premature in the early hours of Christmas morning 25^th December 1642 and was not expected to survive. His father had died three months earlier. It wasn’t a great start, especially when his mother remarried a few years later and left him in the care of his grandparents at Woolsthorpe manor. He seemed to be a troubled kid and after proving himself unable or unwilling to take to sheep farming, his teacher eventually saw some promise in him and took him under his wing to prepare him for Cambridge.

At just 19 he listed his sins in his notebook which gives us some insight into his personality and the puritan age he grew up in. Before Whitsunday 1662 –

Using the word (God) openly

Eating an apple at Thy house

Making a feather while on Thy day

Denying that I made it

Making a mousetrap on Thy day

Contriving of the chimes on Thy day

Squirting water on Thy day

Making pies on Sunday night

Swimming in a kimnel on Thy day

Putting a pin in John Keys hat on Thy day to pick him

Carelessly hearing and committing many sermons

Refusing to go to the close at my mother’s command

Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them

Wishing death and hoping it to some

Striking many

Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese

Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer

Denying that I did so

Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it

Setting my heart on money learning pleasure more than Thee

A relapse

A breaking again of my covenant renued in the Lords Supper

Punching my sister

Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar

Calling Dorothy Rose a jade

Gluttony in my sickness.

Peevishness with my mother

With my sister

Missing chapel

Beating Arthur Storer

Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter

Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne

Twisting a cord on Sunday morning

Reading the history of the Christian champions on Sunday

During 1666 the plague arrived in England and 24-year-old Isaac was sent home from Cambridge university to escape infection. The next few years at Woolsthorpe manor proved to be some of his most prolific. Returning to University he was a key figure in the scientific revolution and enlightenment and is well known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.

But its Sir Isaac Newton’s work as an alchemist which is rarely mentioned. Newton’s Alchemy papers had been seen as unsuitable to publish and considered heretical. He has been described by JM Keynes as one of the last magicians. In fact, Newton likely died at age 84 from poisoning, he had been experimenting with mercury in his search for the philosopher’s stone.

What did I find at Woolsthorpe manor? Yes, the apple tree still exists and is possibly old enough to be the ONE. It’s a gnarled old lady of a tree, untidily sprawling across the garden and propped up at one side as is befitting its great age.

The manor is both beautiful and modest and I get the impression that the young Isaac spent a lot of his time in his bedroom experimenting and studying. It feels like any other building of its age. The English Civil war has left its mark on Isaac’s bedroom plaster with a childish drawing of a cavalry soldier but has Newton left any mark on his home?

As soon as I set foot in Newton’s bedroom, the energy was palpable. Although the bed was placed in the wrong position, standing near where his head would have been positioned while he slept was incredible. I have no hesitation in accepting that the man was not only a genius but was enlightened and at some point, in his search for the answers to the universe he did indeed discover the philosopher’s stone.

And what became of grannie’s dairy bowl? Well while taking the tour around Woolsthorpe manor I did spy an antique bowl on the window ledge which I laughingly said, ‘that looks just like the one I have in the garden full of plants. At which point I went quiet, did some research and realised I had indeed planted up an antique dairy bowl, which I’d left in the rain and snow and had probably been around as long as Newton. I’ve since evicted the alpine plants and woodlice and I’ll take better care of it from now on. Sorry Granny.

More details on Newton can be found at Welcome to the Newton Project (ox.ac.uk) and I’ll let you follow the breadcrumbs to discover his alchemical work.

Fancy a visit to Woolsthorpe manor ? - Woolsthorpe Manor | Lincolnshire | National Trust