Walter Alfred Charles Partridge (b1920)

 

IRNHAM-born Walter Alfred Charles Partridge went to the village school and one in Lichfield, Staffordshire, before returning to his old home where his father was gamekeeper to the Benton-Jones family at Irnham Hall.

After working with his father, he was called up in 1940, starting in the 7th Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment and transferring to the Royal Artillary.
He was with the South Coast Ack-Ack and was in the D-Day landings on June 7th.

He said: “We left the following day. The trouble was, the Germans knew we were coming.

“We defended Pegasus Bridge. Sweeny (Richard) Todd helped capture it and we held it.”

He returned to Irnham after seven years and took over his father’s role as gamekeeper.

About 20 years later he left the land, moved to Grantham and worked at Aveling Barford for 17 years.

For the past 47 years, he has held an allotment in Inner Street. He still goes down nearly every day, weather permitting.

“You make a lot of friends down here. You don’t eat everything you grow, you barter with fellow allotment-holders.”

He also has apiaries, although he’s gradually winding down the bee-keeping side of his hobby.

And he also likes to travel. He still flies over to see his grandchildren in Tokyo. He’s already been 14 times.

Nigel Doughty(1957– 2012)

NIGEL Edward Doughty, was a venture capitalist who, made a fortune buying “risky businesses” and then spent much of it on the Labour Party and Nottingham Forest Football Club.

But despite the publicity that usually accompanies political donations and investments in football, he stayed largely out of the public eye.

His rise to riches, which found him running him a network of offices around the world and enjoying suppers with the Prime Minister came as something of a surprise to those who had known him growing up.

Mr Doughty was born at Newark-on-Trent, and went to Magnus Church of England School but left after taking his O-levels. He completed an MBA at Cranfield School of Management in 1984, and the same year joined Standard Chartered, where he became a founding member of a management buy-out unit, working with Dick Hanson.

At the end of the decade the pair left to set up CWB Partners, a joint private equity venture between Standard Chartered and Westdeutsche Landesbank, and then set up Doughty Hanson as an independent firm. Within years it had become one of Europe’s largest venture capital groups.
The firm aimed to buy specialist businesses valued between £200m and £1bn, and among its acquisitions were Dunlop Standard Aerospace, watchmaker Tag Heuer and the sportswear manufacturer, Umbro.

Doughty’s rapidly expanding personal wealth was a measure of the firm’s success. By 2005 The Sunday Times Rich List ranked him 916th, with £52m. Shortly before he died, estimates suggested he had more than doubled that, to around £130m.

A lifelong Labour supporter, he gave £3.5m to the party over seven years, becoming an assistant treasurer and leading its small business taskforce. His initial donation of £250,000 followed a supper with Tony Blair, but with Labour enthusiastically promoting an alternative energy agenda, eyebrows were subsequently raised when it turned out that Doughty Hanson owned LM Glasfiber, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer.

It seemed Doughty’s takeover of Nottingham Forest would be considerably less controversial, especially as his £11 million rescued the club from administration. He was a season-ticket holder who first watched Forest play as a six-year-old, and pouring in a further £100m, appeared to make him the perfect benefactor.

The club was twice relegated, strains with fans emerged. Promoted back to the second tier, Doughty promised to spend enough to ensure promotion back to the premiership.

Doughty installed the former England coach Steve McClaren as manager, but when he resigned after just 10 games in charge, Doughty resigned as chairman too, admitting that the appointment had been a mistake.
He was found dead at the gym of his house in Skillington with sudden adult death syndrome.

He married first in 1985 Carol Elizabeth Green, with whom he had a daughter and a son, Michael, who became a midfielder for Queens Park Rangers. After the marriage was dissolved in 1997 he married Lucy Vasquez, with whom he had two sons.

Storer, Arthur (1648 – 1686)

ARTHUR Storer was America’s first colonial astronomer.

His step father was William Clarke the second husband of Arthur’s mother Katherine. Katherine brought her four children Arthur and her other three offsprings Edward, Katherine and Ann to the marriage.

Clarke was an apothecary, who lived next door to Le George (later George Hotel) on Grantham High Street and his best known lodger was a 12-year-old Isaac Newton who was attending Kings School.

One of Newton’s well known confessions list in the Fitzwilliam notebook of 1662 includes “beating Arthur Storer”.

Arthur’s sister Katherine Storer, did not deny that Newton may have had a romantic interest in her.

William Stukeley interviewed her in 1727 after Newton’s death when she was ‘Mrs Vincent’ a widow of 82 years. He wrote: “Sir Isaac and she being thus brought up together, it is said that he entertain’d a passion for her, when they grew up: nor dos she deny it.”

Storer left England for Calvert County, Maryland, in 1678 with his sister Ann, an apothecary, to start an herb farm on land that is now the site of the planetarium that bears his name.

He was among the first observers to sight and record data about a magnificent comet that passed over Patuxent skies in 1682. Storer’s observations of the comet are considered to be the most accurate of his contemporaries (including Edmund Halley) with the exception of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

Storer’s work shows up in a number of Newton’s writings. The comet became known as Storer’s Comet, until Edmund Halley later predicted the comet’s return; thereafter this celestial marvel was known as Halley’s Comet.

His observations of the great comet of 1680 are mentioned twice in Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

John Cust (1718-1780)

SIR John was a Member of Parliament from 1743 and Speaker of the House of Commons for the last eight years of his life.

His early death at the age of 51 was the result of having to preside over lengthy and excited debates without a break.

These could last up to 17 hours and his constitution was ruined to the extent that he died only days after his retirement.

It was customary for the Speaker to keep, in lieu of a pension, the entire contents of his official home when he retired. These included a 200-piece silver dinner service.

It is decorated with the arms of George III and has handles formed by the Royal Supporters.

Although Speaker Cust did not live to enjoy the rewards due to him for service to his country he was created 1st Baron of Belton in 1776.

Wilks, John (1919-2006)

JOHN Wilks was a persistent campaigner for democracy and open government, who was a public servant in the town for nearly 30 years.
Mr Wilks’ quiet demeanour disguised his rebellious and principled nature. He left the Conservative group in the 1980s after refusing to toe the party line.
His campaigns for Grantham people covered a broad spectrum from openness in local government to improved traffic systems for the town.
In 1978 he helped organise a march of Earlesfield children, who were denied free transport to the new Central School.
And in 1999 he was in a minority calling for Asda to be allowed 24-hour opening.
He also formed and was still chairman of Grantham Road Users Association at his death. He was a tireless campaigner for the Grantham east-west bypass and refused attempts to compromise.
One compromise he fought, was to use Springfield Road. Ironically, one of the roads off it is now named after him.
Mr Wilks was first elected to Lincolnshire County Council in 1977.
He joined South Kesteven District Council in 1983, representing St John’s Ward, where he remained until his death.
He was Mayor of Grantham in 1993/94.
Born in Southport, he joined the RAF in 1937 and was posted to RAF Cranwell in 1938. He served at St Vincent’s, Grantham, in Bomber Command. He was also posted to until 1963. During this time he helped with the rebuilding of Baghdad Airport as well as postings in Palestine, Egypt and Bahrain.
He bought a house in Grantham in 1957 and later opened a grocery in Kitty Briggs Lane and with his brother built the flats and shops in Denton Avenue.
Mr Wilks became head of communications for Decca, London, and joined the Ministry of Defence for six years before retiring.
He became chairman of the Civil and Public Service Association then general secretary of the Ministry of Defence Staff Association.
One of his last civic duties was at Prince William of Gloucester Barracks, where he went up in a Tiger Moth, flying over the town for the first time in 70 years, at the age of 87.

Ben Dillon (1888-1941)

JOCKEY Bernard Dillon was born at Caherina in Tralee.

In 1901 he joined his older brother Joe, both of them being apprentice jockeys at the famous Druids Lodge training establishment in Wiltshire England.

Victory on Lemberg in the 1910 Epsom Derby was his most famous achievement although he also rode winners in the 1,000 Guineas (Flair, 1906 and Electra, 1909), Lincoln (Uninsured, 1904), Cambridgeshire (Hacklers Pride, 1905), Eclipse Stakes (Lally, 1907 and dead heated on Lemberg in 1910), Coronation Cup (Pretty Polly, 1906) and the Grand Prix de Paris (Spearmint, 1906).

Dillon became the third husband of the Music Hall star Marie Lloyd.

They met in 1910 and caused a scandal when, travelling together as “Mr. and Mrs. Dillon” in 1913, she was refused entry to the United States for “moral turpitude”.

Alexander Hurley, Lloyd’s true husband at the time, died two months later, and Dillon and Lloyd were married at the British Consulate in Portland, Oregon, in 1914.

During World War I, Dillon served in the transport lines at Belton Park, Grantham, the Machine Gun Corps training depot.

He was not a good soldier, and was often in trouble. However, Marie Lloyd would travel to Grantham to upbraid any officer who had punished her husband.

These officers would often go missing when she arrived.

After the war, Dillon began drinking heavily and abusing Lloyd, so that she began drinking as her own escape. In 1920, they separated, but Lloyd continued to slide downhill until she collapsed on stage in October 1922, dying three days later.

He was portrayed by actor Tom Payne in the 2007 BBC drama Miss Marie Lloyd – Queen of The Music Hall.

Danny Bergara (1942 – 2007)

Daniel Alberto “Danny” Bergara de Medina was a Uruguayan footballer and manager who also managed Grantham Town.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Bergara began his playing career at the age of 16, playing for Racing Club in the Uruguayan First Division, picking up a handful of under-21 caps for Uruguay, before moving to Spain in 1962 where he was top scorer for Real Mallorca for four seasons and Sevilla for two seasons.

While playing in Spain Bergara married an English travel guide, Jan, and when he retired from playing football they moved to England.

Bergara coached the reserve teams at Luton Town and Sheffield United before getting his first managerial job at Rochdale in August 1988.

In 1989, after seven months at Rochdale, he took over as manager of Stockport County.

Bergara is  one of the first Football League manager who did not speak English as a first language. He was also the first manager born outside the British Isles to lead an English club out at Wembley, when he took Stockport County to the 1992 Autoglass Trophy final.

1993-94 was his last full-season in charge of The Hatters another trip to Wembley losing to Burnley 2-1 again, referee David Elleray controversially sending off two Stockport players Mike Wallace and Chris Beaumont. The only time the same side has ever had two players sent off at Wembley.

Just before the end of the 1994-95, Bergara stepped down as Stockport manager but such was his esteem, in 2012 the club renamed the Main Stand of their Edgeley Park ground after the popular Uruguayan.

Shortly after leaving Stockport, Bergara joined Sheffield Wednesday as assistant to David Pleat, but after one season departed to become manager of Rotherham United, during this stint, Rotherham had one of their worst seasons ever on record. Bergara left following the poor season.

A brief spell at Doncaster Rovers followed, during which time the club were featured in the 1998 Channel 5 ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary “They Think It’s All Rovers”.

For the 1998-99 season, he was manager of Grantham Town, who had just won promotion to the Southern League Premier Division. He was brought by the club’s controversial chairman Reg Brearley.

A string of poor results saw Bergara become the club’s Director of Football and Chief Scout, with Tony Kenworthy, becoming manager. Later he scouted for Sunderland.

Bergara died after a short illness one day after his 65th birthday.

 Alastair Redfern (b1948)

BISHOP of Derby Alastair Llewellyn John Redfern was previously Bishop of Grantham for eight years.
Redfern was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. Having practised as a solicitor he was ordained in 1976 and became a curate in Wolverhampton.
He then became a lecturer and later vice principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon.
From 1987 to 1997 he was the Canon Theologian of Bristol Cathedral before his ordination as suffragan Bishop of Grantham.
In 2005 he was translated to be the Bishop of Derby.
Redfern received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2001

Elaine Harris (1939 – ?) 

ELAINE Harris, of Station Road, Grantham, struck a blow for women musicians.
When only 15 she joined the top all-women Ivy Benson Band, playing at Torquay.
She had seen the band playing at the Marble Arch Corner House, London, and asked if she could have an audition.
After hearing Elaine play, Miss Benson signed her on immediately.
Later that year, 1954, she had to apply at Bow Street Court for permission to travel to Germany as a musician.
Elaine began playing cornet when she was eight and for two years studied piano under King’s School music master Stephen Mundy. She was a Phil Parker trumpet student for seven years
She also played trumpet in the Grantham Orchestra and Ruston and Hornsby Band.

Howitt, Reg (1920- 2007)

GEORGE (Reg) Howitt was born at Castle Bytham, educated locally and married Dorothy, a Grantham girl, in 1942 who died in 1979. He married Joyce in 1983.

Before the Second World War he worked as a dairyman out of Bassingthorpe, and then worked in Leicester as a handyman and chauffeur.

During wartime he was a tank driving instructor, based at Barnard Castle Camp.

On leaving the Army in 1945 he worked at Neal’s (later Coles Cranes), but left in 1947 to become self-employed, building and operating his own mobile fish and chip van, the first in the area.

He built up a reputation for quality and covered Grantham and villages to the south of the town.

In 1967 he bagan a new business and career producing diecut shapes of silicone paper to interleave frozen burgers. He ran both businesses until 1969, when he sold the fish and chip business.

He developed a new business, Grantham Manufacturing, to produce gaskets for non-automotive applications. During the 1970s all Glow-worm boilers were fitted with gaskets made by Reg’s company.

In 1973 his son Colin joined the business and in 1977 his other son Martin joined to add his management and accounting skills. In 1985 Mr Howitt retired but remained interested in the business as it developed into a specialist paper converter.

He was a very practical person and took great interest in amateur radio and built many interesting electronic gadgets for his family and friends.

His great passion was caravanning, which he started in 1955. In 1964 he joined the committee of his Lincolnshire Centre and was chairman in 1969, 1970 and 1971. From the early 1960s he and his family were involved in organising a Christmas Rally for the centre and he continued with this until 1991.

He often travelled to Europe with his caravan, visiting Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France and Spain.
His local interests also included membership of the Engineering Society and Probus.

Gervase Tyndale (c1510-?)

GERVASE Tyndall was from a long established family, originally from Northumberland, but had settled in Deene Park in Northamptonshire.
He was sent to Oxford University, where gained his BA on 25th February 1530.
He was the headmaster at Grantham Grammar School from 1534 until 1537. When he arrived at the school, the school building and the headmaster’s house would have been new.
In 1535, after Henry VIII had married Anne Boleyn and broken with the Papacy, Tyndale became a self appointed informer against people who supported the Catholic faith.
He reported the warden and friars of Greyfriars’ House in Grantham, who were accused of supporting the Pope against the King.
He also wrote to Thomas Cromwell in Latin complaining about a priest called Stanley who preached to the people in Grantham church on purgatory and Masses for the dead.
In 1536, his distant cousin William Tyndale was tried for heresy and executed in Vilvoorde outside Brussels after translating the Bible into English.
Gervase left King’s School 1537, when he was appointed headmaster of Eton College.He was now a well thought of spy, which is clear from Henry VIIIs letters and papers.
In 1538, he became a member of the household of Catholic Margaret Pole the Countess of Salisbury, whose son was Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. She was the daughter of George Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV and was brought up with the King’s children at court.
For a short time after the death of the King’s children, her brother became heir to the throne and she became princess royal.
After the Battle of Bosworth Field, she remained a claimant to the English throne and Gervase Tyndale became part of her downfall and ultimate brutal execution, after continuing as a spy for Cromwell.
In August 1538, Tyndale was a patient in a hospital founded by Margaret. Surgeons Richard Ayer who was sympathetic to the new religious governmental policy, faced dismissal from Margaret Pole’s staff.
He found a kindred spirit in Tyndale and gossiped to him about what he heard had happened in the household.
Gervase was called before Cromwell at Lewes, and reported this gossip concerning a number of circumstances about the escape some years before of the countess’s chaplain, John Helyar, rector of Warblington beyond sea, and about clandestine messages sent abroad by Hugh Holland, probably to Cardinal Pole himself.
Margaret was removed to the Tower and executed in 1541, a year after Cromwell.
Nothing further was heard about Gervase Tyndale.

Dennis Rickett (b1946)

BORN in Portsmouth, Dennis William Rickett came to Grantham when his father bought several fishmongers shop in the area called Rutland Fisheries.

He went into the family business when he left school at 15, and took over the Welby Street shop in 1971, renaming it D W Rickett.

As well as fish, the shop supplied game and specialist cheeses for both retail and catering. He was helped in the shop by his wife Carole.

The shop closed in 2012 when Dennis retired.

He was a leader with Barrowby Scouts and a keen canoeist when he was younger. This led to him to qualify as a senior canoeing instructor.

He played guitar in several local bands, including The Vikings, King Bees, King, Vintage, 3 Faze and Take Note.

He formed duo DnR with which he continued after retiring.

Willie Young (b1951)

FORMER footballer William David Young was a large, physically intimidating centre back from Edinburgh.

Young first played for Aberdeen, and made 187 appearances for the Dons between 1970 and 1975.

He was signed by Spurs in September 1975, and made 54 appearances in two seasons.

In March 1977, Young signed for arch-rivals Arsenal.

Young immediately became a regular in the first team, and played in all of the Gunners’ trio of FA Cup finals.

Having played 237 times for Arsenal, the 30-year-old Young then joined Nottingham Forest in December 1981 for £50,000, and played 59 times over two seasons there.

In 1983 he joined Norwich City, but with injuries dogging him, he failed to secure a regular place in the side; short spells at Brighton and Darlington followed, before retiring from the game in November 1984.

Young left the game completely after his retirement, and after running a pub near Nottingham, he now owns Belvoir Kennels in Bottesford.

He is occasionally on television as a football pundit on STV’s Scotsport.

Hannah Ayscough (1623-1679)

HANNAH Ayscough is best known as the mother of Sir Isaac Newton. She was born in Market Overton in Rutland to James Ayscough and his wife Margery Blythe. Hannah married farmer Isaac Newton, the elder, in April 1642 and moved to Woolsthorpe Manor, near Colsterworth. He died in October 1642, and nearly three months later their only child Isaac Newton was born.
Hannah left young Isaac in the care of her parents, when he was three years old.
At that time she moved to North Witham to marry the vicar Barnabas Smith. She and Rev Smith had three children: Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah. Isaac resented his stepfather and once threatened to burn the house Barnabas and the family lived in with them in it.
When Rev Smith died aged 70 in 1653, Hannah returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, by which time Isaac was 10 years old, and returned to his mother’s household.
As his father had been a farmer, Hannah decided in 1659 that Isaac should also be a farmer, and thus took him away from his school studies.

He spent a year away from school on the farm, at quite a critical time in his education.
Isaac went back to school in autumn 1660.

Later in his life, at the age of nineteen, Isaac grew very resentful of how his mother had left him when he was young.

Hannah’s brother William, unlike her, saw the abilities that her son had and was instrumental in Isaac’s attending of Trinity College in June 1661.

Hannah seemed to be more interested in her farm than in Isaac’s academic achievements.

She died in Stamford, Lincolnshire, when Isaac was 36.

She was buried at Colsterworth on June 4, 1679 by her son, who buried her next to his father. Isaac spent much of the remainder of this year in Woolsthorpe.

 Rory Underwood (b1963)

MIDDLESBROUGH-born Rory Underwood MBE is a record-breaking former English rugby union footballer who played wing for Bedford and most notably, Leicester Tigers.
He moved to Skillington in 1987 and has since lived in both Grantham and Allington.
He represented England and the British Lions and is a former Royal Air Force pilot.
His father was a Yorkshire engineer who worked in Malaysia where he met and married Underwood’s Chinese-Malay mother.
He was educated at Barnard Castle School (with Rob Andrew) and RAF College Cranwell.
His early life was spent in Malaysia, then his family moved to Yorkshire, but his father worked in Malaysia.
In the RAF, he played for the Strike Command and main RAF rugby team. He flew as Flying Officer Underwood with 360 Squadron, on Canberras at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire. He then flew the Hawk with 100 Squadron also at Wyton.
He took a ground-instruction job in 1995 at RAF Cranwell becoming a Flight Lieutenant, while playing for Tigers. He then flew twin-engined Dominie until leaving the RAF in 1999, the year he retired from the first class game.
After playing rugby as a youngster at Middlesbrough Rugby Club (with Rob Andrew and Bernie Coyne) he became one of the greatest wings in rugby union.
Underwood is the leading try scorer for England in international matches. He first played for England in February 1984 against Ireland at Twickenham. He won 85 England and 6 Lions caps between 1984 and 1996 (then an English record, later surpassed by Jason Leonard – it remains the highest total for an English back), scoring a record 49 tries for England, and one for the British Lions, making him one of the leading try scorers of all time. He played for England in the Rugby World Cups of 1987, 1991 and 1995.
Many of his tries are classics and he is renowned for the ability to run as fast with the ball in hand as without.
Yet he almost didn’t come into the game at all, as he was once a promising junior footballer on Middlesbrough’s books.
More recently he has worked as a management consultant. He set up UPH, a management and teamwork training company, with John Peters and Martyn Helliwell in1999.
He is on the board of Leicester FC (Tigers).

John ‘Trousers’  Truesdale, (1943-2012)

JOHN William Henry Truesdale was born in Stoke Rochford, but the family moved to Grantham shortly afterwards.

He went to the National School then St Wulframs.

His first job was on a pig farm at Harrowby, but soon got an apprenticeship as an electrician with Williams Bros.

He then moved to Grantham Electrical with whom he remained until retirement.

He played football for Meres Rovers and Beeden Park. He was a rock ‘n’ roll fan and was a huge follower and friend of locally-born singer Vince Eager

Known as ‘Trousers’, John wasn’t a great footballer, nor an outstanding electrician, but he will be remembered for many years for his cheerfulness and being a thoroughly decent human being.

 Frederick Tollemache (1804-1888)

EVERYONE knows the Newton statue, on St Peter’s Hill, but many people still ask “who’s the other chap?”
Well, the Hon Frederick James Tollemache, whose statue stands at the southern end of the green, was very popular in his day, he was Member of Parliament for Grantham for 40 years. This was spread over four periods between 1826 and 1874.
The bronze statue, on a base of granite blocks cost around £1,700 which was raised by public subscription. Many poor people gave pennies they could ill afford.
The statue, unveiled by Sir High Cholomeley depicts Tollemache supporting himself on a long staff, which became something of his trademark in his later life, and wearing his favourite oversized Inverness cape.
He is carrying a felt hat in his left hand.
Tollemache was born at Buckminster Park, the fifth son and the 10th child of William, Lord Huntingtower.
Educated at Harrow, he was elected as a Liberal at the age of 22, one of two MPs for Grantham.
He failed to gain re-election in 1830 because it was thought his ideas for change were too modern. He had wanted to retire from politics in 1865 but was persuaded to re-stand.
A huge crowd waited to greet him. Supporters pulled his carriage through the town.
Tollemache married twice, but both wives died after only a few years of marriage.
He died at Ham House, Petersham, Surrey.

He has two pubs named after him, one adjacent to his statue, the other in his home village, Buckminster

Andrew ‘Pinch’ Pinching (b1965)

DRUMMER in The Damned, Andrew Pinching, was born in Grantham and went to the King’s School.

He was a member of BMARCo Amateur Boxing Club. He began boxing at eight years old for Rugby Irish Club, while living with his father who was divorcing.

He returned to Grantham with his mum.

Pinch  joined BMARCo’s ABC and with them reached the semi finals of the schoolboy championships two years in a row, beaten by the eventual winners both times.

He was seriously thinking of moving to professional boxing, when his trainer emigrated to Australia and he discovered punk rock.

He sported a Mohican hairstyle and became a founder member of English Dogs in 1980 – with no music experience and staged their first gig upstairs at the Earlesfield Arms.

According to Pinch: “I got the oldest punk in town to be the singer (Wakey Wakefield) and guitar player Jon Murray, who was fed up playing in a rock band called Overdrive, so he brought his flying V with him and we promptly bashed a couple of 6 inch nails through it to make it look more punk.
“My mate Wattie got a bass for xmas, which left the drums, so I kind of picked it up by default.”

Pinch says his mum bought his first drum kit right before she moved out of town to avoid a violent relationship with a total psycho.

He shared a flat with Wakey over a High Street shop opposite Guildhall Street – which has since become legendary. He is also a founder member Janus Stark.

He has been drummer in punk band The Damned since 1999 and moved to the USA in 2002 after meeting his future wife Miranda.

Arthur ‘Spike’ Jones (1917-  ? )

BORN and brought up in Old Trafford, Manchester Arthur ‘Spike’ Jones was the son of grinding wheel maker and a weaver.

As a schoolboy in the 1930s, he earned 1/3d (7p) a time carrying golf bags containing up to 18 clubs for players on the Worsley course.

Yet neither Old Trafford nor golf are clues to his sporting life.

He wanted to become an engineer, but when he saw a sign in a barber’s offering a six-year apprenticeship, he took it. After qualifying and working for a year in his home city, the 21-year-old jumped on his bike and headed for London.

After three years in Romford he moved to Ilford where he endured the first stages of the London blitz Night after night he spent in an Anderson shelter but fortunately another refugee broke the monotony by teaching him chess.

Having failed his Army medical, Spike spent most evenings fire-watching.

He met and married Vi and the couple moved to Axminster.

Having seen a vacancy in Grantham, he became one of six barbers at Foster’s High Street shop in 1946.

But times were hard. He was thrown out of his home by his landlord, who was armed with a possession order and was unable to find his family alternative accommodation.

He caused a quite a stir when he pitched his tent in Abbey Gardens, in protest at the town’s housing situation. He slept in the tent on the green overnight while his expectant wife and his child stayed with friends.

Mrs Jones then stayed overnight at the Public Assistance Institution, the former workhouse (Hill View), on Dysart Road.

Arthur became self-employed and rented a room above a shop at the confluence of Stamford Street and Victoria Street. It was his salon for 28 years.

Many of his customers were at the factories and he visited them to cut their hair at work.

Arthur became hooked on Judo, not just for the physical fitness but for the mental alertness.

He gained a black belt and became a third dan. He was a founder of Grantham Judo Club, in a disused Army hut on Harlaxton Road.

He also continued his love of chess and at the Grantham Chess Congress defeated international master Susan Arkell.

Deering, Richard (1882-1907)

RICHARD Deering was sentenced to death after a lovers’ suicide pact went horribly wrong.

Deering, a married man from Birmingham, had been working in the area as a booking agent for a travelling performing dog and animated picture show.

At Edenham in 1907 he met Emily Lockwood and the couple fell in love.

Realising their plight, with him unable to afford a divorce, the couple decided on a joint suicide pact.

Emily bought oxalic acid and they took equal amounts and lay together in a stream to die.

They were spotted by a passing carter who called police. The couple were taken to the workhouse infirmary and although Emily died, Deering was saved.

He was found guilty of willful murder by the jury at Lincoln Assizes.

The defence said the girl had bought the poison but the prosecution insisted as it was a joint pact each was guilty of murder.
The jury put forward a strong recommendation for mercy but in passing sentence the judge ignored this.

Deering was hanged at Lincoln prison.