Huntingtower Road

The Earl of Dysart (also known as Lord Huntingtower) donated the land between Springfield Road and Harlaxton Road, plus £1,000, for a new school for 330 pupils in 1912.

But there was a catch. The gift was conditional on the town council building a road, Huntingtower Road, to link the two.

It proved a sound investment. When the council issued a compulsory purchase order on 18 acres of land west of Huntingtower Road and south of Brick Kiln Lane (Springfield Road) in 1921, it was valued at £320 an acre.

The council planned to develop 200 houses, running from the railway marshalling yards to where KFC now stands at the Harlaxton and Springfield junction.

Huntingtower Road, like Dysart Road, takes its name from a Scottish peerage, though the story is less obscure than it first sounds. In 1643, William Murray, who had once represented Fowey and East Looe in the English House of Commons, was made both Earl of Dysart and Lord Huntingtower.

The title passed through his daughters and their heirs until Lady Dysart married Sir Lionel Tollemache, whose family inherited it. And it is this link, with the Tollemache family a major landowner in Grantham through the Buckminster Estate, that gives the road, the pub and the school their names.

The Huntingtower Arms

The Huntingtower Arms, on the corner of Huntingtower Road and Harlaxton Road, opened in 1915, the only pub in town to launch during wartime. It was granted its licence following the closure of the Blue Dog on Watergate.

But it nearly didn’t happen. The Education Committee objected, arguing that “a fully licensed house with all its attendant evils and degrading influences” should not be built so close to Huntingtower Road School.

Others maintained that sportsmen and followers of Grantham FC, who played next door, would not want the distraction of a public house so close to their ground.

The Tunnel

The pedestrian tunnel under the railway, linking the school with the town centre, forms part of an ancient footpath between Grantham and Sewstern. Known as the Jitty, or Station Approach, it also runs diagonally across Norton Street.

The right of way that once ran alongside the railway embankment from Harlaxton Road, joining the path leading to the tunnel, was known as Workhouse Lane, after the institution to which it led.

Huntingtower Road School

Huntingtower Road School, as it was then known, opened in 1914, about five years before the road itself was built. Access was by footpaths, including the one running under the railway line. To the west lay Mr Andrew’s farm, yet to be developed.

The school was desperately needed. St Anne’s alone had turned away 100 pupils, with places at a premium. If a child failed to turn up, they would find their place taken and go to the back of the queue.

The school’s most famous former pupil was Margaret Roberts, later Thatcher, who became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. Her father, Alfred Roberts, a staunch Methodist, preferred to send his daughters to a non-denominational school, the alternatives being either Church of England or Catholic. She was there from 1930 to 1936, when she left for KGGS. Mr Roberts also insisted the girls came home to North Parade for lunch each day.