Stratford-Upon-Avon: The Shakespere Houses

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust was founded in 1847, with the purchase of Billy's childhood home as a national memorial.

Shakespeare’s Birthplace is still the cornerstone of the trust's educational and conservation works, and, along with the neighbouring exhibition centre, provides the highlight of any visit to Stratford.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage is everything people expect from England; rural, idyllic, and with a hint of romance, as one imagines Billy courting his future wife here.

Hall's Croft, Nash's House, and New Place widen the trust’s remit as they examine life in Billy's time, delving deeply into medicine and local history respectively.

Finally, at Mary Arden's House and Palmer's Farm, you get a glimpse of life in rural England as the Shakespearean Countryside Museum guides you through 400 years of agricultural history.

Quick Tips:

Prices can start to add up, with tickets to each of the houses costing between £3 to £6, and if you are planning on visiting several of the properties, it is worth considering purchasing a combined ticket for all five properties at the reduced rate of £12.

The government-run tourist information centre is on Bridge Street, next to the river, and can provide all the usual info on accommodations, transport, and other attractions.

Best Way To Get Around:

Stratford is a relatively compact town, and most of the properties are within walking distance, including a pleasant, mile-long stroll to Anne Hathaway's Cottage in neighbouring Shottery.

The rail line between Stratford and Birmingham Moor Street is the most useful for visitors and includes a stop at Wilmcote for Mary Arden's House. A steam engine runs this line in summer for tourists with the time and the money.

A couple of very interesting old houses with small but fascinating museums and spacious and relaxing gardens are two of the lesser sites on the Shakespeare trail, these are Hall's Croft and Nash's Place.

Hall's Croft was built in 1613 as a home for local physician John Hall and his wife Susanna, Billy's oldest daughter. The main rooms including the parlour and bedchamber have been furnished in the style of a wealthy professional of the period and pieces include an attractive draw-leaf table, an ornate children's high chair and a solid oak tester bed. John's professional life is represented by a room furnished as a doctor's consulting chamber and a large exhibition room stuffed with some of the nasty looking medical implements of the time as well as a copy of John's own posthumously published work "Select Observations on English Bodies" which curiously never achieved the same lasting appeal as some of his father-in-law's works. There is also a large garden planted with many of the herbs John used in his cures.

Nash's House was the property of Thomas Nash and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John and Susanna Hall and hence Billy's granddaughter. The downstairs entrance hall, parlour and kitchen are furnished in the manner of an affluent townhouse of the age and feature the curious cupboard of boxes, an ornately carved dinning table and locally produced Sheldon tapestries. Upstairs is a small museum that recounts Stratford's history from Roman settlement until today, of particular interest are the artefacts from Billy's time and the displays on David Garrick's 1769 Shakespeare festival, but my own personal favourites are the rustic carved angels recovered from the guildhall chapel.

Next-door to Nash's House is the site of New Place, Billy's retirement home and the place where he died in 1616, the building was sadly demolished in 1759 in a desperate attempt by the then owner to avoid paying rates. All that now remains are some of the brick foundations and an old well, and much of the site is taken up by an ornate Elizabethan knot garden. Outback is the Great Garden with its immense lawns, box-hedges and ancient mulberry bush grown from a cutting of the bush planted by Billy and cut down by the aforementioned tax dodging successor in an attempt to dissuade the tourists who were apparently already swarming the town by the 1750's.

Hall's Croft and Nash's House are hardly major tourist draws in themselves but make pleasant enough diversions for comparatively little extra cost, while the Great Garden at New Place can be accessed free of charge by anyone wishing to relax and escape the crowds for a little while.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Shottery was the home of Billy's wife and generations of her family. It is said that it was here on the old elm-boarded settle next to the fireplace in the hall that Billy and Anne sat while courting, and that the beautiful surroundings inspired "Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It".

The lower part of the old farmhouse dates from the mid-15th century and was constructed using long curved timbers, known as crucks, which are inverted to form the roof. While the upper part was added in the early 17th century by Anne's eldest brother Bartholomew using the later box-frame style due to the rarity of suitably curved timbers to form crucks. The chance to compare these two early architectural styles is one of the rare privileges afforded by this unique house. The cottage was already attracting visitors by the 1750's and Mrs Mary Baker the last descendent of the Hathaway's to live here was still guiding tourists around until 1892. The cottage was purchased by the trust following her death and was left, pretty much untouched, furnished as a typical Victorian country cottage, with many of the pieces on display handed down through generations of the family.

The downstairs consists of the hall, kitchen, buttery and cold-room and pieces worth looking out for including the 16th century bread ark, 17th century dresser and the wonderful old bread oven with its solid wooden stop. Upstairs there are a series of bedrooms with display pieces including a finely carved oak tester bed, a four-poster plain-bed with homespun hangings and the 17th century oak and walnut "Shakespeare Chair" with it's carving of details from Billy's coat-of-arms. It is said that Billy gave this chair to his granddaughter who passed it on to the Hathaway's, from whom it was bought by a tourist in 1792 only to remerge in 2002 when it was purchased at auction by the trust and returned to the cottage. Around the back of the cottage is a small museum of the Hathaway's personal items including a 17th century bolster and Mrs Mary Baker's Victorian bonnet. Out front is a small Victorian cottage garden with its tightly packed rows of flowering plants and around the back on the land that was for generations farmed by the Hathaway family is the Shakespeare tree garden with and Elizabethan yew maze and modern sculptures inspired by Billy's works.

The quaint little cottage in its picturesque setting is one of the quintessential images of "Ye Olde England" and is well worth making a detour to if you are in the area.

Mary Arden's House and Palmer Farm are situated upon several acres of ancient farmland in the village of Wilmcote, 3.5 miles from Stratford, and provide a glimpse into English rural life as well as the chance to meet a genuine movie star.

Palmer's Farmhouse was constructed in 1569, although the hall and kitchen date from 1580. These include display pieces such as the inglenook fireplace (whatever that is), an early 16th-century aumbry cupboard (presumably for storing all those aumbrys you have lying about), and a 17th-century dining table marked up for a game of shove-halfpenny (who needs television and the internet?). The dairy and parlour occupy the older part of the house and pieces to look out for here include a 16th-century carved chest, a 17th-century bread ark, and, my favourite, a 19th-century mouse trap, while in the upstairs room you can see a children's truckle bed. This was for centuries believed to be the childhood home of Mary Arden, Billy's mother, but research released in 2000 revealed that this honour belonged to the neighbouring Glebe Farm, purchased by the trust in 1968 and subsequently renamed Mary Arden House. This property was left largely untouched and items on display in the living room, dairy, and parlour include a locally made 18th-century clock, some 19th-century china, and an early 20th-century iron stove.

Spread across the farmyards and outbuildings here are the collections of the Shakespearean Countryside Museum. This museum attempts to tell the story of rural life in England that formed the backdrop of a number of Billy's plays, including "As You Like It," which was set in the bordering Forrest of Arden, from where the Arden family took there name. In the rickyard you sill find farm wagons, a 19th-century horse-drawn fire engine and two rustically decorated Romany caravans. Out the back of Palmer's farm is a horse-powered cider mill, open-fronted Byre, a quaint dovecote with 650 thankfully vacant nesting niches, and the great barn with exhibitions on the seasonal jobs on the farm. The museum concludes in the outhouses of Mary Arden's House with exhibits on the craft of carpenters, coopers, and wheelwrights. The grounds are home to the trust's herds of Cotswold Sheep and Longhorn cattle that can be seen on the pleasant field walk. While the garden plays host to regular displays of falconry with a variety of birds of prey on show, including Ricky, the Snowy Owl that plays Hedwig in the Harry Potter films, although be warned, as he is notoriously reluctant to sign autographs.

The houses and their settings are evocative and make you want to write sonnets, while the museum is fascinating and well organised, and yet doubtless due to its distanced location, this is one of the least visited of the properties, but then that's all the more reason to go.

The highlight of any trip to Stratford is, of course, Shakespeare's Birthplace, the childhood home of England's national bard and a draw for tourists from around the world.

The Birthplace is accessed through the rather nasty looking brick building adjacent, which houses the visitor's centre and an exhibition on Billy's life and times. Exhibits include a 16th century school desk from where Billy is studied, a first edition of Billy's collected works and a detailed scale model of the original Globe Theatre in London. The exhibition is interesting, though a little disjointed, as it attempts to present the few facts that are known of Billy's life and weave them into a larger picture of Elizabethan life, but it does do a fine job of setting-the-scene for what is to come.

The Birthplace was built around 1568 for John Shakespeare, Billy's father, a prosperous glove-maker and wool-merchant, and his wife Mary. Billy was born here in 1564 and continued to live here for many years, joined by his wife Anne following their marriage in 1582, before he moved to London to find his fame and fortune. Billy inherited the Birthplace following his father's death in 1601 and the property passed down the family line, through his sister Joan Hart, until the early 19th century. The Birthplace was acquired by the trust at auction in 1847 and underwent painstaking refurbishment to replicate how it would have looked during Billy's time.

The entrance leads past a small display introducing you to the building, before opening up into the Birthplace itself. The first room on the ground floor is the parlour, which contains the guest bed, was where the family would have gathered during the day. A doorway leads through to the hall with its large set dinning table and gothic style benches where the family would have dinned, and the Workshop with dressed animal skins and glove-making tools on display where John would have carried out his business and sold to the public.

Upstairs are the bedrooms, the first contains an exhibition on the history of the house and displays the original bathroom window where many 18th century visitors including Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle scratched their names. The next room is furnished with a half-headed bed and replica painted cloths while the final room, where according to legend Billy was born, displays a cradle, toys and other replica items from Elizabethan childhood. The rear-wing was added around 1601 when this part of the house was used as an inn and upstairs has a small display of archaeological upstairs and a replica kitchen and buttery downstairs that in Billy's time would have been in a separate outhouse. Outside is a picturesque Victorian country garden, planted with many of the flowers mentioned in Billy's works.

The Birthplace provides a fascinating insight into Elizabethan life and is a delight for and fan of Billy's and his work and is still well worth a visit even if you are not.