Goodliff Road, linking Dysart Road and Trent Road, is part of the Earlesfield estate. It was named in 1960, two years after William Goodliff’s death, when Grantham Town Council’s housing committee recommended a road on the new estate be named in his honour, on the back of a recommendation from the estates and highways committee.
Goodliff was the eldest of seven children, born at Bardney to a railwayman father. He joined the railway himself in 1902, moved to Grantham in 1908, and became a passenger guard, working the line for exactly 50 years until his retirement in 1952. He also gave decades to the railwaymen’s union, chairing the local NUR branch for 25 years and holding various roles in it almost continuously from 1912.
He first stood for Grantham Town Council in 1920, lost his seat, spent a few years on Labour’s organisation side, and returned as a councillor in 1927. He didn’t leave again: 34 years’ service in total, 31 of them unbroken, and an alderman from 1945. As well as his year as mayor, in 1951-52, he served as deputy mayor several times, was a magistrate, and led the Grantham Labour Party, in one capacity or another, for around 47 years. He was also chairman of the Boys’ Central School managers for more than 20 years, a founder of the Grantham Labour Club and Institute, a former member of St John’s Bowls Club, and from 1946 chaired both the borough’s estates and highways committee and its road safety committee.
The Street scene with the Blue Pig has changed little unlike the western end of the street.
Goodliff died at Grantham Hospital in February 1958, aged 70, after a long illness. He was survived by his widow, his son F. W. Goodliff (by then assistant editor of the Grantham Journal), and his daughter Mrs M. L. Holliday of Bottesford.
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