Walks through Grantham Cemetery shed light on town’s historical figures from both world wars and a victim of the 1906 railway crash

Walks through Grantham Cemetery shed light on figures who contributed to the town’s history, including a victim of the 1906 railway crash.

Tours of Grantham Cemetery, in Harrowby Road, were held on Friday and Saturday as part of Lincolnshire Heritage Week.

A range of venues in the town and surrounding villages were opened over the last few days as part of Lincolnshire Heritage Week.

Among those places open to the public in Grantham were St Wulfram’s Church and its Trigge Library, the hidden cemetery on Manthorpe Road and Grantham House.

Nearly fifty people took part in Heritage Open Day walks at Grantham Cemetery, which were led by Melvin Dobbs and John Manterfield, chair of Grantham Civic Society.

Amongst the headstones noted in the cemetery were those commemorating Georgiana Baguley, killed in the Grantham Rail Crash of 19 September 1906 and two local soldiers, 2nd Lt Harry Goodacre, who died in Cork military hospital in 1919 and his brother William, missing in Flanders in 1917. The group also saw a memorial to Robert Sharpe another Grantham man killed, aged 28, in Operation Market Garden, the Battle for Arnhem, a bridge too far in September 1944.

The cemetery houses over 45,000 burials including 114 Commonwealth war graves as well as the memorial to nearly a hundred civilians killed in the town during the Second World War.

Prominent in the centre of the cemetery are four granite obelisks that commemorate Richard Hornsby and his three sons, Richard, William and James.

The engineering enterprise that they founded employed some 2,200 men at the outbreak of the First World War.

John Manterfield said: “Very positive feedback was received from participants.”