Pieces of Sir Isaac Newton's Home Are Up For Grabs

Anyone can now own a piece of Isaac Newton's home thanks to a conservation project.

The apple tree garden in front of Newton's home | Paul Harris / National Trust

It is claimed the scientist, born at Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in 1642, observed an apple falling from a tree that led to his theory of gravity. The 17th Century house in central England, now in the care of the National Trust, is currently undergoing work to replace the second of the cellar windows, with varying sizes of cut-away stone available to buy in the manor's shop. Visitors can buy various sizes of the local limestone, with a donation that will go towards conservation work.

Jennie Johns, collections and house officer at the manor, said there had been interest from around the world, and that the local limestone being replaced had been there for about 500 years.

She told the BBC that the work is taking place due to some of the stone work on the cellar level having "deteriorated over time with cracks forming", she said. Sizes vary from the "height of a desktop computer or a little slither that could act as a paperweight."

Newton returned home in 1665 after Cambridge University, where he was a student, closed because of the Great Plague. Years later, he told a story that a falling apple in the orchard inspired him to think about the theory of gravity, which he described in his 1687 book Principia. In the work, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity.