Spirit of Grantham – Walk Leader
Leads the walk and introduces the characters, dressed as a greyfriar.
Thomas Paine
Born in 1737, Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. He stayed at the old George Hotel in Dec 1762 for some 22 months.
Mary Ann Rawle
A lifelong fighter for women’s rights. Incarcerated in Holloway Prison in 1907 for suffragette activities. Mary moved to Grantham in 1910 and formed a branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union in the town. Suffragettes in Grantham supported a march from Edinburgh to London.
King Richard III
Believed to be responsible for the murder of his nephews, Edward V and Richard of York. Richard III later died on the battlefield of Bosworth, following defeat by the armies of Henry Tudor – the final battle of the Wars of the Roses. He stayed in the Angel while en route to Lincoln to obtain the Great Seal of England from the Lord Chancellor.
Blue Pig landlord
Retells tales of the Blue Pig and its ‘interesting’ history
Thomas Hurst
Thomas Hurst was born in Barrowby in 1598, son of Richard and Alice Hurst. He attended Cambridge University, became ordained as a deacon at Peterborough in 1621 and later he became Chaplain to King Charles I (appointed in the Kings Room at the Angel). He was part of a Royalist group besieged in Newark Castle.
Arthur Storer and Sir Isaac Newton
Arthur Storer was born in 1645. Isaac Newton boarded at his family’s house while he also attended the King’s School. They fought in the churchyard but later, when Newton listed his sins, he said that he regretted ‘beating Arthur Storer’. Newton and Storer developed a lifelong friendship. Arthur Storer later travelled to Maryland, USA and became the first North American astronomer to make accurate measurements of celestial objects.
Isaac Newton went onto become one of the greatest mathematicians and influential scientists in the world and serve as MP for the University of Cambridge, Warden and later Master of the Royal Mint and president of the Royal Society.
Princess Margaret Tudor
Sister of Henry VIII and later Queen to King James IV of Scotland. She was grandmother to Mary Queen of Scots. She stayed at Grantham House in 1503 at the tender age of fourteen on her journey to Scotland to marry James IV. She was met four miles from Grantham by an entourage of the Aldermen, Burgesses and inhabitants of the town.
William Marshall
The Marshalls were all Clerks of the Grantham parish. More of a ghostly figure for this walk.
King John
Succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother, King Richard the Lionheart in 1199. Famous for being the King that signed the Magna Carta and the tyrannical king featured in the Robin Hood stories. King John stayed at the Angel three times during his reign and held court there in 1213
Maria Fitzherbert
Maria was longtime companion of George IV before he became King. In 1785, they secretly contracted a marriage that was invalid under English civil law because his father, King George III, had not consented to it. She was a Roman Catholic so, had the marriage been approved and valid, George would have lost his place in the line of succession. She regularly stayed in Grantham with her sister, Lady Haggerstone.
Charles Dickens
Born in 1812, Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. He stayed at the George Inn in 1838 and immortalised it in his novel, Nicholas Nickleby. The George was also an early home for GDS with a little theatre in the courtyard.