Museum in Grantham rejects call to be re-named after Margaret Thatcher

The museum in Margaret Thatcher’s hometown should be renamed after the late former prime minister, the leader of the local council has said.

Cllr Ashley Baxter, of South Kesteven district council, said the renaming of Grantham Museum could spark a tourist boom in the Lincolnshire town.

But the museum has rejected his call, saying it exists to promote “all of Grantham” – not just Britain’s first female prime minister.

A statue of Mrs Thatcher has stood outside the museum, which is devoted to the history of the town and the surrounding area, since 2022.

In a council meeting on March 26, Cllr Baxter called on Grantham to go a step further in honouring its most famous daughter by renaming the museum itself.

“Far more people will be looking up the name Margaret Thatcher compared to searching for Grantham Museum,” he said. “Some people are fond of her legacy, and some despise it.

“If we tell the story with different perspectives, far more people will be likely to come to Grantham to see the statue and visit the museum.”

Cllr Baxter added that the renaming could help Lincolnshire attract as many visitors as tourist hotspots like Devon and Cornwall.

“We’re better than Devon and Cornwall and we should be drawing some of those visitors away,” he said.

The museum boasts a substantial collection of Mrs Thatcher memorabilia, including one of her handbags and her puppet from Spitting Image, the satirical BBC show.

The museum was previously at the forefront of the successful campaign to erect the bronze statue of her.

But the museum rejected Cllr Baxter’s calls for it to be renamed, saying: “It is not something we would support or consider. We remain committed to promoting all of Grantham, its rich history and its heritage.”

Cllr Charmaine Morgan, a member of the council’s Democratic Independent Group, said “there is far more to Grantham than Margaret Thatcher”.

Cllr Graham Jeal, a Conservative who sits on the museum’s board, said the renaming would be “wrong” because the museum exists to display all of “Grantham’s rich and diverse history”, including Sir Isaac Newton and the Royal Air Force.

“In spite of what Cllr Baxter said, many thousands of tourists do find their way to the Grantham Museum,” he said.

“I think it would be wrong to focus our town’s rich history around one figure – important though she was in putting Grantham on the map.”

John Manterfield, the chairman of Grantham Civic Society, said the town was about more than Mrs Thatcher.

“We have many Grade I listed buildings including our magnificent medieval church with its wonderful spire and amazing Francis Trigge Chained Library, and we have the highly popular Belton House and Belvoir Castle just a few miles away,” he said.

“Grantham Museum not only has material related to Margaret Thatcher but also to Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time.”

Mrs Thatcher was born in Grantham in 1925 and grew up at her father’s grocers shop on North Parade.

She attended Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School – where she was head girl – in the town before studying at Oxford and later becoming MP for Finchley in London, education secretary and eventually, in 1979, prime minister.

Mrs Thatcher was in office for the next 11 years, becoming Britain’s longest-serving prime minister of the 20th century, before resigning in 1990 and being ennobled as Baroness Thatcher two years later.

The bronze statue of her, which was created by Douglas Jennings, the sculptor, at a cost of £300,000, was first commissioned in 2013, shortly before her death.

It was designed to stand close to the Houses of Parliament but was rejected by Westminster City Council in 2018.

It was instead unveiled in Grantham in May 2022, but had eggs thrown at it by an academic from the University of Leicester within two hours of its installation.

The statue has since been vandalised by others with paint on at least four occasions, including with the phrases “Tories out” and “burn in hell”.