Grantham () is a market and industrial town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, situated on the banks of the River Witham and bounded to the west by the A1 road. It lies some south of Lincoln and east of Nottingham. The population in 2016 was put at 44,580. The town is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of South Kesteven District.
Grantham was the birthplace of the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Isaac Newton was educated at the King's School. The town was the workplace of the UK's first warranted female police officer, Edith Smith in 1914. The UK's first running diesel engine was made there in 1892 and the first tractor in 1896. Thomas Paine worked there as an excise officer in the 1760s. The villages of Manthorpe, Great Gonerby, Barrowby, Londonthorpe and Harlaxton form outlying suburbs of the town.
Etymology
Grantham's name is first attested in the Domesday Book (1086); its origin is not known with certainty. The ending -hām is Old English and means "homestead". The first part of the name may either be the personal name Granta or derive from the Old English word Grand (gravel), implying either "Granta's homestead" or "homestead by gravel". In the early 20th century, the town's name was still pronounced Grant-m or Grahnt-m; but as people moved more frequently and became more literate, they began to derive the place name from its spelling and the pronunciation shifted to Granthum (the t and h becoming a th phoneme). This was already becoming common in 1920, and the later pronunciation is now the norm.
Geography
Grantham is a town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, a non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands of England. Until 1974 it was a borough, but it is now unparished and bounded by the civil parishes of Great Gonerby to the north-west, Belton and Manthorpe to the north, Londonthorpe and Harrowby Without to the north-east and east, Little Ponton and Stroxton to the south, Harlaxton to the south-west, and Barrowby to the west. Its urban area is almost entirely within the unparished area, though The Spinney housing estate, Alma Park industrial estate and part of the Bridge End Road housing estate are in Londonthorpe and Harrowby Without.
Topography and geology
The town lies in the valley of the River Witham, its core at the Witham's confluence with the Mowbeck (or Mow Beck). The Witham flows south–north through Grantham. The Mowbeck, which rises from springs at Harlaxton about to the south-west of the town, is culverted behind Westgate and Brook Street until it joins the Witham at White Bridge.
The floor of the Witham valley – 50–60 m above sea level in the town centre – is underlain by mudstone of the Charmouth formation of the Lower Jurassic period (199–183 million years ago). This formation is overlain by Belton sand and gravel laid down in estuaries and rivers in the Quaternary period up to 3 million years ago. The river courses are overlain by Quaternary alluvium and to the north by river terrace deposits. The soil around the route of the Witham is wet, acidic, sandy and loamy; its fertility is poor.
As the ground rises on the town's eastern and southern fringes, it is underlain by Jurassic Marlstone rocks of ferruginous sandstone and ironstone formed 190–174 million years ago, and then by Whitby Mudstone of 174–183 million years ago. The land rises sharply to form the Lincoln Cliff that marks the edge of the urban area and start of the Lincoln Heath and Kesteven Uplands, which are capped by Jurassic Oolitic Limestone, mostly overlain by shallow, free-draining, lime-rich soils.
To the west, the town is near the edge of the low-lying Vale of Belvoir but fringed by an escarpment rising in places to over 100 m to form the hills on which sit Barrowby, Great Gonerby, the Green Hill and Earlesfield suburban areas and the business parks off Trent Road. These hills are of siltstone and mudstone of the Jurassic Dyrham Formation, which line the edges of the Witham and Mowbeck valleys and the shallow valley of Barrowby Stream. At its highest the scarp is capped by Jurassic ferruginous sandstone and ironstone rocks of the Marlstone formation. There are some head deposits and pleistocene glaciofluvial deposits of sand and gravel east of Barrowby. The soil in the lower areas is slowly permeable, seasonally wet and slightly acidic, though base-rich. On higher ground it tends to be slightly acidic and base-rich, but freely draining and highly fertile.