Shakespeare’s Country
THE GUILD CHAPEL, AND THE SITE OF NEW PLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course
The earliest record of the house in which Shakespeare died at Stratford is contained in these words of a visitor there in 1760:
“There stood here till lately the house in which Shakespeare lived, and a mulberry-tree of his planting; the house was large, strong and handsome; the tree so large that it would shade the grass-plot in your garden, which I think is more than twenty yards square, and supply the whole town with mulberries every year. As the curiosity of this house and tree brought much fame, and more company and profit, to the town, a certain man, on some disgust, has pulled the house down, so as not to leave one stone upon another, and cut the tree, and piled it as a stack of firewood, to the great vexation, loss, and disappointment of the inhabitants; however, an honest silversmith bought the whole stack of wood, and makes many odd things of this wood for the curious, some of which I hope to bring with me to town.”
The “certain man” who pulled the house down was the Reverend Francis Gastrell. Shakespeare bought New Place in 1597. It had been built by Sir Hugh Clopton in 1483. After Shakespeare went to live in it we can imagine him standing in his garden and watching the boys with their “shining morning faces” going to the school nearby. Now, however, nothing remains but the foundation of the house.
Shakespeare died there on April 23, 1616. He left the house to his daughter, Susan Hall. She lived there until 1649, and her daughter in turn kept it until 1670. In 1753 it came into the possession of the Reverend Francis Gastrell. Visitors annoyed him so much that he cut down the poet’s mulberry-tree that grew in the garden, and later razed the house to the ground. The site was purchased by money raised through public subscription and presented to the trustees of Shakespeare’s birthplace in 1870. Only the foundations are now visible, covered over by wire. The great garden at the back is now a public garden, and in it on the central lawn is a mulberry-tree, descended from the poet’s own tree.
Next to New Place is the house of Shakespeare’s grandson by marriage, Thomas Nash. It has been restored so as to give it the appearance it had in Shakespeare’s day. Thomas Nash was married to Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare’s only granddaughter and last surviving descendant.