Ancaster - Isaac Newton and the great Ocean of Truth

In my quest to do some research before the Grantham-Ancaster-Sleaford walk, I decided to learn more about Isaac Newton, who was born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, just a few miles south of Grantham and a stone's thrown from the ancient Roman road, known as Ermine Street.  It's amazing really that this son of an illiterate farmer from Lincolnshire, could become one of the most influential thinkers in human history. 

Early life in Woolsthorpe and Grantham

Newton was what is known as a posthumous child, meaning his father died before he was born.  The consequences for Newton were severe, in that his mother was forced to remarry and, as part of her marriage contract, to abandon the young Isaac, leaving him in the care of his grandmother.  Newton hated his mother's new husband and I have no doubt that the experiences of his childhood would go some way to explain his antagonism towards society in later life and his desire to live in a world of numbers and equations. 

Newton had a wide variety of interests throughout his life and, although we usually associate him with the sciences of physics and optics, he was also interested in subjects like Linguistics (he wished to design a common, global language that would be based on mathematical principles) and History (towards the end of his life, he spent weeks and months calculating the reigns of Kings and Pharoahs and trying to predict the end of the world.)

Cambridge and the Lucasian professorship

Newton's mother had always intended that he would go into farming and continue the familty tradition at Woolsthorpe, but Newton was so phenomenally bad at sheep rearing that money was found to send him to Cambridge, albeit in a very lowly position as sizar, ie. a kind of servant to the richer boys.  He managed to make a name for himself and did so well at Cambridge that, aged 26, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, currently one of the most prestigious academic titles in the world, having been held recently by people like Stephen Hawking. 

Newton was only the second person to hold this post, mathematics being a new arrival on the academic scene and somewhat derided for being the science of merchants and traders.  In the historical context of the Interregnum, the Age of Exploration and the new politics of Cromwell and the Puritans, mathematics was becoming increasingly important as a subject matter.  By all accounts, Newton was a great academic, but a poor lecturer.

Light, Space and Colour

During his time at Cambridge, Newton continued his research into the nature of light, space and colours.  He's famous for inventing the reflecting telescope, which increased the ability of astromers to explore the sun, solar system and far-away planets.  Late 17th-century Europe was a bit obsessed with space and the solar-system.  Early scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo had exploded the myths about the Earth being flat and the solar system revolving around the Earth.  Much of Newton's time was devoted to understanding the relationship of the solar system to the sun.  He was amongst the first to posit magnetic fields of attraction, that held the sun and the planets in orbit and meant that the movement of planets and comets could be predicted.  The 1690's saw an unusal number of comets pass through the Earth's atmosphere, no doubt leading to a sense of panic and a feeling that the end of the world was nigh.  Newton wasn't an astronomer, but he was able to apply mathematical principles to rationalise the orbit of celestial bodies.  One of his biggest fans was a young astronomer called Edmund Halley, well-known to us in modern times because of Halley's comet.

Alchemist or Scientist

Newton's era saw a revolution in attitudes towards the older science of Alchemy and the new sciences being explored by the newly-founded Royal Society.  Because he believed in invisible fields of attraction or magnetism, Newton was accused of being an Alchemist.  Alchemistry was starting to get a bad name, as science moved into the Age of Enlightenment.  There was a real desire among the new scientists to rid science of all quasi-religious or supernatural associations.  To his credit, Newton spent all his energy rationalising that which seemed irrational, but he still allowed for an element of magic or the unknown.  Later critics of Newton, like the poet William Blake criticised Newton for taking modern science down the road of mechanisation and away from the very obvious spirituality of the Earth.  In many ways, I think it was inevitable that Newton's rationalising would consign Alchemistry to the footnotes of modern Science, although I'm not sure that this is what Newton had intended.

Rivalries and the Royal Society

My work is all about helping teachers collaborate online, across borders and with teachers in other parts of Europe and the world, so I'm really interested in the history of global collaboration.  In many ways, the Royal Society was the very beginning of this.  Not only did the Royal Society, which was founded in 1660, seek to bring science into the realm of experiment and away from the endless theorising of previous generations, but it was also the first time an international review of scientific developments was published, mostly organised by Henry Oldenburg, a German diplomat and first Secretary of the Royal Society.  For me, it was exciting to learn about this early example of international collaboration and how, by building on and developing the ideas of their counterparts on the Continent, British scientists and mathematicians were able to leap forward and add a new element to the debates that were raging across Europe at the time.

I would love to say that Newton embraced this collaboration whole-heartedly but, in fact, the opposite was true.  Having been stung early on by the criticism of his arch-rival Robert Hooke, Newton became obsessively secretive about his work, refusing to share his research with others and refusing to listen to any criticism or questioning of his theories.  In many ways he was right!  It seems as though Newton was ahead of his time, which would explain why he found the endless questioning and doubt of his contemporaries frustrating.  Time has proved Newton correct on many points, most notably the existence of magnetic forces and also atoms, which he struggled to conceptualise or define.  His rivalry with Hooke and later with Leibniz reminds me of children squabbling over a favourite toy.  It certainly wasn't the best example of scientists collaborating.

Principia - Newton in a nutshell

What Newton is most remembered for is his publication Principia, reputedly one of the most boring books ever written.  I have an abhorrence of maths and physics, so a lot of Newton's discoveries have gone right over my head, as no doubt is the case with many of us.  Nevertheless, I'll try to summarise Newton's Laws of Motion, so apologies to the real scientists out there!

Law 1 - Everything will stay in its original place, unless compelled to move by force (especially important to know this one if you have to get a teenager to school in the morning)

Law 2 - There is a relationship between the rate of change and the force applied and this can be calculated mathematically (although I wouldn't even know where to begin)

Law 3 - probably the most famous one:  every action has an opposite and equal reaction, eg. when a horse pulls a cart, the cart (although seemingly inanimate) also pulls against the horse. 

Whew!  Back to Newton's biography.

Working-class boy makes good

I don't know whether or not it was to do with his poor upbringing, but when Newton was offered the chance to become warden of the Royal Mint, under the patronage of Charles Montagu, the first Earl of Halifax (who was boning Newton's niece), he jumped at it!  It might seem like a strange profession for one of Britain's most eminent scientists to pursue (by all accounts he was ruthless in his pursuit of counterfeiters), but it kind of makes sense, given his background in alchemistry (manipulating metals) and mathematics.  Also it made him fabulously wealthy, which he celebrated in true rags-to-riches style by decorating his new London home in a gaudy crimson and by dying intestate. 

Newton and the apple

His resounding legacy for those of us who are not scientists is, of course, the apple.  I remember as a child, reading about Newton discovering gravity by sitting under an apple tree and having an apple fall on his head.  I tried the same experiment a few times, but you have to wait an awful long time for an apple to fall - better to give it a bit of encouragement with a stick (see the First Law of Motion). 

Of course, the story of the apple didn't really happen.  Newton had a fair idea about gravity already and didn't need an apple to prove it.  However, he did have apple trees in his garden at Woolsthorpe and he did speculate about the amount of gravity it takes to bring an apple crashing to the Earth, as opposed to the Moon, which has never been drawn in by the Earth's gravity in this way.  I guess this was the birth of the Second Law of Motion and the relationship between force and rate of change.  Newton realised that the Earth's gravitational pull on the apple must be a lot stronger than its pull on the Moon and was able to calculate the difference in a way that made absolute sense to him and his mathematical buddies (I guess the rest of us just need to trust them!). 

It's no surprise really that the story of Newton and the apple caught the imagination of 18th-century Europe, when Voltaire started retelling the story, as though it had actually happened.  Of course, in Christian mythology, the apple is associated with Eve and the Garden of Eden.  It's about sharing divine knowledge and breaking the last taboos of man's dependence on God.  I guess, like Adam, Newton also tasted the apple of Eden and moved science in a direction it would never again return from. 

I want to leave you with one of Newton's most famous quotes, which sums up his assessment of his life's work.

I don't know what I may seem to the world but, as to myself, I seem

to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting

myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell

than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered

before me.

Credits:

The image of the sign at Grantham station was taken by me.

The portrait of Newton is one he commissioned in 1689 and was painted by one of London's most fashionable portrait artists, Godfrey Kneller.  This image is in the public domain and copyright-free.

The drawing of Newton with the graph is by the poet William Blake and it's an image I absolutely love.  It depicts Newton as a semi-Godlike being, rippling with muscles and animal energy.  This is also in the public domain.

The image of the statue of Newton is one I took on Grantham High Street last weekend.

Most of the information in this blog is from a book I've just read called Isaac Newton by James Gleick, the third edition published by Harper Perennial in 2004.

Ancaster - The Walk

This weekend myself and Bam (Best Aussie Mate) did our first 'chester' walk, through Ancaster in Lincolnshire.  The weather was absolutely amazing, in fact, probably way too hot to be outdoors for seven and half hours!  But we had a great walk - the first one I've ever designed all by myself and I would recommend it to anyone who is living in or visiting the area.

Grantham to Belton Park Gates (2 miles/3.2 kilometres)

We arrived in Grantham on Friday night, after work and stayed at a lovely B&B called The Red House on North Parade, run by a couple of (Thai?) ladies.  We had dinner in the restaurant of The Angel and Royal, which was a really nice place to eat and gave myself and Bam a much needed opportunity to catch up on our respective lives, not having seen each other for about two months.  Bam told me about her favourite new song, Bang Bang Bang by Mark Ronson and the Business Intl, so that became our them song for the trip!

After a hearty breakfast, we set off to St Wulfram's Church at about ten the following morning.  The volunteers at St Wulfram's are incredibly friendly and we had an interesting time exploring the crypt and the exhibition room.  St Wulfram was a 7th-century Bishop of Sens, in France and is remembered for his missionary work in Friesland.  There are only two churches dedicated to him in England, the other one being in Sussex.  Grantham ended up with one of his arms, somehow, and St Wulfram's Church sheltered this relic for many years, although his arm seems to have been mislaid sometime during the Reformation.  I guess St Wulfram was the 7th century version of a celeb!  Perhaps this isn't such a modern phenomenon after all.  The church also has the sixth highest spire in England, which is surprising, as Grantham isn't exactly famous for it's landmarks or religion. 

Grantham is famous as the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, who lived above her father's shop in the town.  It was also the place that Isaac Newton first studied mathematics and lived above an apothecary.  It's amazing that this, most unremarkable of English towns, should produce two such influential people.  I'm going to blog more about Isaac Newton later and I'm interested in the influence that his upbringing had on his genius.  Grantham was also the first town in Britain that had women police officers on the beat, Edith Smith and Mary Allen!  I found this plaque on a bench on the High Street and it struck me as being quite ahead of its day, having a Business and Professional Women's Club in the 1950's.  Perhaps not that remarkable after all for the town that produced Britain's first (and to date, only) female Prime Minister. 

Our walk really began in the centre of Grantham, just outside the Guildhall Arts Centre (pictured), we started by walking down Avenue Road, across the Stone bridge and then left alongside the River Witham on a path which is part of the National Cycle Route 1.  At Hill Avenue we turned right onto Belton Lane and followed this all the way down to the gates of Belton Park.  It's a pleasant suburban walk, but the array of signposts related to the cycle network and circular town walks can be confusing. 




Belton Park Gates to Belton House (1.5 miles/2.4 kilometres)

Belton Park is a really amazing place and I had planned my route through it, without expectations as to what the park might be like.  Arriving at the park gates, with that sweeping view of the park and Belton House at the end of it, I was immediately transported back several centuries and could almost hear the carriages rattling up the 1.5 mile drive to the house, amidst the grazing sheep and sunburnt landscape.  Belton House has a really lovely visitors centre, with giftshops, toilets, cafes and an exhibition of carriages.  We didn't have time to go inside and visit the house, which is a National Trust property, but I bought a book about the house and its history which, hopefully, I will be able to share with you at a later date. 


Belton House to Ancaster (5 miles/8 kilometres)

Belton village itself is an amazing little place.  When you come to the fork in the village, just after the telephone box, take the road to the right, which skirts the grounds of Belmont House and takes you through Barkston Heath, via Syston Grange, along a relatively quiet country lane with surprisingly hilly bits and fantastic views over the Lincolnshire countryside.  The only part of the walk that got 'hairy' was when we finally reached the B6403, a.k.a. the High Dyke or Ermine Street, the route of the Ancient Roman road from London to the Humber.  I don't know if it's legal, but you could possibly walk along the outside of the airfield which is on Barkston Heath and has a road running parallel to the B6403 and is certainly a less treacherous option.  My abiding memory of this part of the walk was Bam telling me about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and the novella it was based on by Daphne DuMaurier, which was more explicit in its references to the Cold War and fears of a Communist invasion.

To get off the B6403 we turned right down a country lane leading to the village of Wilsford, turning left about halfway down this lane to follow a bridleway along the top ridge of a small valley, eventually leading us to Ermine Street in Ancaster. 

Ancaster to South Rauceby (4 miles/6.4 kilometres)

Ancaster was the main focus of our walk and we stopped off on Ermine Street to have a banana and a soft drink.  I don't usually eat a lunch when I'm doing a full-day walk, but prefer to have a massive breakfast and then something substantial at dinner time.  I do however spend most of the day eating nuts and dried fruit (or Trail mix, as Bam likes to call it) and, with the high temperatures this weekend, I also drank three litres of water during the walk, which just about kept me hydrated.

The church at Ancaster is called St Martin's and it'll be interesting to see how many other casters/chesters have churches dedicated to St Martin, who is the patron saint of soldiers and an apt choice for what used to be a Roman camp.  It was also interesting to note the RAF presence around Ancaster and I find it intriguing to think that there has been a military presence in the area since Roman times!  Channel Four's Time Team visited Ancaster back in 2002 and found evidence of a Romano-celtic shrine to a God named Viridio.  This is thought to be an incorporation of Celtic animist beliefs, such as the Green Man and the Roman temple which stood on the site of today's church. 

We left Ancaster on a trail recommended by the Lincolnshire County Council, called the Ancaster to Sleaford Railway walk.  It wasn't really signposted, but I had marked the route out on our map and we improvised.  This was one of the most beautiful parts of the walk, skirting the higher end of Wilsford Warren, walking through fields abundant with wheat, passing haystacks like monuments abandoned by an extra-terrestrial life-force.  We did get a little bit lost during this part of the walk, but eventually found ourselves coming out onto Church Lane by Lodge Farm. 

It was then a short walk through some fields and sheep pens to the village of South Rauceby.

South Rauceby to Sleaford (3.5 miles/5.6 kilometres)

The last part of the walk is always the hardest, I find and we bombed along from South Rauceby to Sleaford, the evening heat beating down on our heads as we flew through chicken farms and over Bouncing Hill, along the sticky bank of the River Slea, under the railway bridge and finally getting our breathes back at King Edward Street in Sleaford, where we emerged, dazzled into the welcoming arms of civilisation.  The photo shows our route through a most beautiful cornfield outside Sleaford, almost at the end of our 16 mile (25km) journey.

I think 16 miles was quite a long day and, perhaps, next time we won't do quite as much.  Unfortunately we didn't see much of Sleaford, arriving just half an hour before our train was due to arrive, we were more concerned about getting dinner than seeing the sights of the town!  The Chilli Hut on Station Road is definitely to be recommended and, apart from the friendliness of the manager and his staff, who wanted to know all about our walk, Bam swears it's one of the best curries she's ever had (and she should know!). 

By all accounts Sleaford is an up-and-coming kind of place.  Jennifer Saunders grew up here and Emma Thompson's Dad, Eric, who did the Magic Roundabout (the English version) was a local.  I guess we've missed our chance to see what Sleaford has to offer but, you never know, fate may conspire to bring us Sleaford way again sometime!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me on my (very basic) Canon Ixus 65.  Feel free to use the images under the Creative Commons License and don't forget to reference the source ie. this blog.

Ancaster - Welcome to Learning about Britain!

Welcome to this first posting on my new blog Learning about Britain.  This is a sister blog to http://www.learningabouttheworld.blogspot.com/ which is almost a year old.  The idea is to learn about Britain in greater depth than the countries in Learning about the World, because this is where I live and because the focus could be slightly different.

Me and my BAM (Best Aussie Mate) have come up with the crazy idea of getting to know Britain better by visiting every major town/city ending in -caster, -cester and -chester.  We thought that this might lead to some random trips to parts of Britain that we've never been to before and, what started off as a crazy idea, has now almost come to fruition in terms of our first trip which, alphabetically, will be to Ancaster in Lincolnshire. 

We're going to stay in nearby Grantham and do a walking trip through Ancaster, finishing in Sleaford.  I want to document our trip and blog about the learning experience along the way.  In true learningabout fashion, I want to also read a book related to that local area, watch a movie or TV programme inspired by the place we're walking through, listen to some music and, if at all possible, cook a local dish - oh, and I won't forget to sample the local brew! It should be a bit of fun really and I hope you'll join us virtually, by following this blog.  We've started alphabetically, so I guess that's how we'll continue.  We're also limiting ourselves to castercesterchesters that are on the National Rail network, otherwise it could end up being very random indeed! 

As I started researching this trip, the first thing that struck me was that our choice of placenames with the etymology 'castrum' is not that random after all and Ancaster, like most of the casters we'll be visiting, has remains of the Roman fort that once stood on this site.  Doh!  It seems so obvious now and it's a great thematic link for the places we're planning to visit.

Britain's history didn't start with the Romans, of course, but with the Celts.  Learning about Roman Britain is, by default, learning about Celtic Britain.  The celtic period of Britain's history is not really history at all, ie. documented and attested, but rather pre-history - that which exists mostly through archaeological guesswork and continues to haunt us through its unusual placenames and the names of long-forgotten kings.  In my brief dip into Celtic Britain this week, I've been amazed to learn about a whole country full of Celtic tribes - the Iceni of Norfolk, the Catuvellauni of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, the Corieltauvi of the East Midlands and the Brigante of Yorkshire and the north.  I had no idea that these tribes had names and histories that could be made out, despite the obscurity of time.

Luckily, I've already read Robert Graves seminal history of Rome, I, Claudius, so I can place the Roman invasions of Britain between their first contact with the Trinovantes of Essex during Caeser's time and the full-scale, forty thousand man strong invasion during the time of Claudius in 43AD.  I think the Roman invasion of Britain had an impact on this country way beyond anything that happened later.  It was Britain's first real experience of aggressive colonisation, the first time Britain had belonged to a Europe united by the Roman Empire.  Before the Romans came along, even the word Britain didn't really exist.  They applied it to the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and (perhaps) Iceland, later restricting the use of the term to their subdued Roman province Britannia - corresponding, more or less and rather confusingly, to modern-day England and Wales. 

I realise that by visiting the chesters, we will be learning about England more than Britain.  But we're going to start with the Roman concept of Britannia and perhaps later, we can move on from that and visit other parts of the country as well.  In another, rather controversial way, the Roman invasion of Britain gave birth to a sense of national identity to those north of Hadrian's Wall (loosely called the Scots) and to a lesser extent, those to the west of the initial Roman border on the Trent (the Welsh).  The Roman tactic in colonising Britain was to build forts/castrums to secure its newfound territory, then employ local administrators from the friendlier Celtic tribes and have them run the colony on Rome's behalf.  Two thousand years later, it's a tactic that reminds me a lot of Western governments' plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I'm looking forward to our first trip to Ancaster and hopefully I will have lots to report back on, not just about Ancaster, but also about Grantham and Sleaford.  Coming centuries after the Roman invasion, the Anglo-Saxons have formed the basis of English identity and I hope to combine our cester/caster/chester trips with many hams and fords and burys along the way!

Image credits:

The photo of the Green man (Banksia man) is by Graham Wilson, wikiuser Dgu56 and he has shared this with the world using the Creative Commons License.  Find out more information about re-use of this image here.

The image of Britannia on her plinth has been supplied by flickuser Tim Ellis and you can see more of Tim's photography on his blog http://tmellis.wordpress.com/

Thanks Graham and Tim for sharing your images with the rest of us!