Town in Warwickshire, England

Stratford-upon-Avon

A Warwickshire market town where a furious owner chopped down Shakespeare's mulberry tree to get rid of the tourists, and the tourists never went away.

Key information

County: Warwickshire
Nation: England
Known for: William Shakespeare, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Tudor timber-framed houses
Famous people: William Shakespeare, Sir Hugh Clopton, Susanna Hall

About Stratford-upon-Avon

The man who cut down Shakespeare's tree

Stratford's tourist trade is so old that it once drove a man to violence against a tree. In the 1750s the Reverend Francis Gastrell owned New Place, the grand house where Shakespeare spent his final years. He was fed up with visitors turning up to gawp at the mulberry tree said to have been planted by the playwright, so in 1756 he had it chopped down. The locals were furious. Gastrell then fell out with the town over a tax bill and, in 1759, pulled down the entire house. The wood from the tree was already being turned into souvenirs, and enterprising woodworkers carried on selling Shakespeare keepsakes for years. The site is now a garden, but the story shows how early the pilgrimage began.

A town designed on a grid in 1196

Long before Shakespeare, Stratford was a deliberate piece of medieval town planning. In 1196 Richard I granted a charter for a weekly market, and the Bishop of Worcester laid out new streets of long, narrow plots. Names such as Bridge Street, Henley Street and Sheep Street still tell you what the town was for. The river did the rest. The Avon was crossed by Clopton Bridge, built in the late 1400s by Sir Hugh Clopton, a local boy who became Lord Mayor of London. It still carries traffic into the town, and it's the reason the place is a crossing as well as a market. The river and the market made Stratford prosperous enough for John Shakespeare, a glover and wool dealer, to settle in Henley Street.

The Shakespeare trail

William Shakespeare was baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 26 April 1564, and was buried there in 1616. His grave, in the chancel beside the river, carries a warning: good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here; blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves my bones. The timber-framed house in Henley Street, where he is traditionally said to have been born, was bought for the nation at auction in 1847. Nearby are Hall's Croft, home of his daughter Susanna and her physician husband John Hall, Anne Hathaway's Cottage in the hamlet of Shottery, and Mary Arden's Farm at Wilmcote, linked to his mother's family. The town celebrates his birthday, traditionally marked on 23 April, with flags, a street procession and actors in costume, with the main festivities held on a weekend close to the date.

A theatre that burned down and came back

The first Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened beside the river in 1879, its Gothic towers paid for by public subscription. It burned down in 1926, and the company carried on in a cinema while an international appeal raised funds for a replacement. The new building, by Elisabeth Scott, opened in 1932. Its brick, art deco lines divided opinion, but it became the home of what is now the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Swan Theatre, a smaller galleried space, was added in 1986. The theatre was thoroughly rebuilt and reopened in 2010, with a tower you can climb for views over the Avon and the town.

Mops, canals and racing

Each October the Stratford Mop sets up in the streets, with rides and fairground stalls. It descends from medieval hiring fairs, where farm workers would carry a token of their trade, and a mop meant you were looking for domestic work. A second event a week later is known as the Runaway Mop, for those who changed their minds. By the waterside, Bancroft Gardens is the town's postcard view, with narrowboats at the end of the Stratford Canal and a theatre backdrop beyond. Stratford Racecourse holds jump racing on the edge of town. And the town's pride in the Bard goes to the very top: the swan on the riverbank is, appropriately enough, a regular sight.