Visit the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton

Woolsthorpe Manor, a modest 17th-century limestone farmhouse near Grantham in Lincolnshire, is the birthplace and family home of Sir Isaac Newton. Born here on Christmas Day 1642, Newton returned to the house during the plague years of 1665 to 1667 and used the quiet of the Lincolnshire countryside to develop his ideas on gravity, motion, optics and calculus, a period sometimes called his "year of wonders".

Now cared for by the National Trust, the manor has been preserved much as Newton would have known it, with low-beamed rooms, period furnishings and graffiti said to have been scratched into the walls by the young Isaac himself. In the orchard outside stands a descendant of the famous apple tree, a Flower of Kent variety, that is said to have inspired his thinking on gravity when he watched the fruit fall to the ground.

Visitors can also explore the Science Discovery Centre in the converted barns, where hands-on experiments bring Newton's laws to life for younger guests, and a small exhibition explores his life, his work at Cambridge and his less well-known interests in alchemy and theology. The site sits in gentle farmland a few miles south of Grantham, easily combined with a visit to the town's St Wulfram's Church and Newton statue.