Drawings from the 18th Century by English antiquarian William Stukeley, lived in Grantham, are being retained in Lincolnshire thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Among them is a picture of the house in which he lived in Castlegate.
A grant of £9,800 has been received by Spalding Gentlemen’s Society for the conservation and sharing of 44 of his drawings in Spalding.
Led by volunteers, alongside professional conservationists whose expertise and materials the grant will now enable, the project which focuses on ensuring these important drawings will be preserved and shared with visitors from the local communities and further afield.
The drawings date from the 1720s to the 1760s and include studies of Stukeley’s Grantham and Stamford house and gardens, Newton’s birthplace Woolsthorpe Manor, as well as his birthplace in Holbeach.
They are unique and provide details not found anywhere else, their importance being recently highlighted by articles in the Antiquaries Journal and the British Art Journal.
William Stukeley, (1687-1765) was a close friend of Isaac Newton and became one of his first biographers.
He pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work.
The son of a Holbeach lawyer, after taking his MB degree at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Stukeley went to London and studied medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital.
In 1710, he started in practice in Boston and became a member of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (founded by his friend Maurice Johnson II), before returning in 1717 to London.
A keen freemason, he moved to Castlegate, Grantham, in 1726 to practice medicines and immediately set up a lodge.
He left town to become vicar of All Saints’ Church, Stamford, between 1730 and 1747.
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