A Visit to Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford Upon Avon

A quick Google search reveals that hundreds of thousands of people visit Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford Upon Avon every year, to stand in the now legendary spot of the playwright's birth and where he spent his early childhood. 

The house, a timber-framed building on Henley Street, has an adjoining modern entrance and museum, and on entering (after a quick bag-check) you see a collection of Shakespeare-inspired artwork on the walls. The historian Robert Wheler, who wrote a history of the building in 1863, noted that Shakespeare's birth took place on 23 April 1564, to parents John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. 

John and Mary were said to have married in 1557, and their first daughter Joan was born the following year. The house may also have been the site where John conducted his business as a glove maker during William's childhood. 

Upstairs, you are signposted to a small chamber, where it is said Shakespeare was born. The early eighteenth-century window has been removed and replaced, tucked in an adjoining room and on display. Visitors as early as 1806 inscribed their names onto the glass of the window to mark their visit, and the window is a kind of history today in itself. The names include Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle and Henry Irving. Wheler noted that by 1863, there were memorials, poems and signatures scribbled all over the whitewashed walls of the chamber, too. Nowadays, there is a guide who watches over the room, but is happy to answer any questions you have (and presumably also make sure no one writes on the walls). 

The boys and girls bedroom, which you actually enter just before the birthplace room, has been sensitively restored, with an Elizabethan-style wall painting over one of the beds next to the fireplace. It was noted that the birth room in the next room didn't have a fireplace and so would likely have been cold, and probably used as a bedroom by the family. 

Shakespeare's statue stands just outside the house of his birth, on a paved, pedestrian street. The next morning before we left for home, we had a breakfast of pancakes and coffee at one of the cafés, aptly named The Food of Love. Their outside seating was a short walk from the birthplace, and it was a real treat to eat breakfast with the warm sun on our backs just metres from the house. 

You can plan your trip to Stratford and Shakespeare's Birthplace here. 

Like this? You  might also like: 10 Things to Know About Stratford On Avon Before You Visit, 10 Facts About William Shakespeare and How to Swear Like a Tudor. 

Source: 

Wheler, Robert. A Historical Account of the Birthplace of Shakespeare, Stratford, 1863. 

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