Qualla: Woolsthorpe Manor https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:22 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/s/woolsthorpe-manor-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Woolsthorpe Manor https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor Woolsthorpe Manor: Introduction https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor/ Photo credit James Thornhill, Public domain. The apple tree is still there. Dendrochronology confirms it to be over 400 years old -- not the original trunk, which blew down in a storm in 1820, but a regrowth from the same roots, tended by National Trust gardeners and protected by a fence. It stands in the orchard of a modest limestone farmhouse in the Lincolnshire village of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, and it is, by a considerable margin, the most consequential fruit tree in the history of science. Isaac Newton told his friend William Stukeley that watching an apple fall from this tree set him thinking about the force that pulled it downward -- the same force, he would eventually prove, that held the moon in orbit around the Earth and the planets around the Sun. The house where this happened is not a grand estate or a university laboratory. It is a yeoman's farmstead, built for rearing sheep.

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Image: James Thornhill | Public domain

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/s/woolsthorpe-manor-wp/gcrs-woolsthorpe-manor-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Woolsthorpe Manor: A Premature Birth on Christmas Day https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor/ Photo credit Hel-hama, CC BY-SA 3.0. The manor had passed through several families -- the Sleafords, the Pigotts, the Thimelbys, the Burys, and the Underwoods -- before being sold to Robert Newton in 1623. Robert settled the property on his eldest son Isaac as a wedding gift in 1639. The younger Isaac married Hannah...

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Image: Hel-hama | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/s/woolsthorpe-manor-wp/gcrs-woolsthorpe-manor-a-premature-birth-on-christmas-day.mp3 0:06 2 full Woolsthorpe Manor: The Plague Year of Wonders https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor/ Photo credit Thorvaldsson, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1665, the Great Plague swept through England. Cambridge University closed its doors. Newton, then twenty-two, returned to the farmhouse where he had been born. What followed was one of the most productive periods of intellectual discovery in recorded history. Working alone in ...

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Image: Thorvaldsson | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/s/woolsthorpe-manor-wp/gcrs-woolsthorpe-manor-the-plague-year-of-wonders.mp3 0:06 3 full Woolsthorpe Manor: A Farmhouse Preserved https://qualla.com/woolsthorpe-manor/ Photo credit It's No Game from Leicestershire, UK, CC BY 2.0. Newton never returned to live at Woolsthorpe permanently. When he died in 1727, the manor passed to his nearest male heir, John Newton, his uncle Robert's great-grandson. In 1732 the estate was sold to the Turnor family of nearby Stoke Rochford, who leased it to a farming family ...

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Image: It's No Game from Leicestershire, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/r/s/woolsthorpe-manor-wp/gcrs-woolsthorpe-manor-a-farmhouse-preserved.mp3 0:06 4 full