Woolsthorpe - Isaac Newton's Apple Tree

Driving often up and down the A1 I'd intended to visit Woolsthorpe for several years but somehow always seemed to have a reason to keep driving north or south rather than turning off the main road.  Eventually, however, I was travelling down to Cambridge on a day when I had plenty of time for a stop, so at last I got to see the famous apple tree.

I have to say that there's nothing particularly spectacular about the tree apart from the fact that it's very old. It would almost certainly have been chopped down years ago if it weren't for the history associated with it.

This is no ordinary apple tree. This is where, allegedly, Sir Isaac Newton watched an apple fall to the ground (or did it land on his head?) and began to speculate as to why it found it necessary to go directly downwards. From this came the theory of gravitation, explicating the concept of gravity.

Today the manor house, the garden and the tree are all in the care of the National Trust, and a very interesting hour or two can be spent going through the rooms of the house. There is much there to learn about the great 17th and early-18th century scientist.

To say simply that Newton was an outstanding man is almost to belittle him.

Newton's Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. It also demonstrated that the motion of objects on the Earth and that of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos.

Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours of the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound. In addition to his work on the calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, and developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function.

Extract from Wikipedia, Isaac Newton

And that's only a start to the listing of his many accomplishments.

I left it too many years to visit Woolsthorpe (despite the fact that I also wanted to see the village church where my 3x-great-uncle was curate for many years). I'd recommend that if you're passing by on the A1 you make the detour. You'll not regret it.

Woolsthorpe Manor