Chapter 12: Stratford-on-Avon by Sidney Lee
XII JOHN SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST SETTLEMENT IN
STRATFORD--THE STREETS
It was, in all probability, in 1551, just before the borough had reached the all-important stage of incorporation, that John Shakespeare first came to Stratford. In the Middle Ages there were no Shakespeares at Stratford. But in the surrounding districts families of the name were numerous. Thus, among the members of a guild -which closely resembled the Stratford Guild at Knoll, near Hampton-in-Arden ,Shakespeares, Shaxpers, Shakespeyres, Shakespeeres, called Richard, John, Miriam, Agnes, Isabella, are found repeatedly between 1464 and 1555. Some of these lived at Rowington, and can be traced there till the close of the last century; one Thomas Shakespeare, of Rowington, was a disciple of Jack Cade. A family of
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Shakespeares also lived at Warwick till the close of the sixteenth century, and on 16th June 1579 William, one of these, according to the register in the church of St. Nicholas, Warwick, met his death by drowning in the river Avon [Pen and Ink drawing omitted here]
(How invaluable might this piece of evidence prove to the monomaniacs who believe that Bacon wrote Will Shakespeare's plays!) But the poet, although doubtless collaterally related to many of these families, was directly descended from none of them. John Shakespeare probably belonged to a
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branch residing in the sixteenth century at Snitterfield, a little village four miles to the north of Stratford, and the Richard Shakespeare who was a farmer, renting there of Robert Arden of Wilmecote, a small tenement, with a little land attached to it, in 1550, was doubtless John's father and the poet's grandfather.
Snitfield, or Snitterfield, had seen days of commercial prosperity, but it was at this time chiefly occupied by small farmers and their labourers. It had a church at the time of the Norman Conquest, and in Page 1242 a market and a fair had been granted it. As a manor it had successively belonged to a monastery of Bordsley and to many Earls of Warwick, and it came, in the sixteenth century, into the hands of John Hales, the founder of a free school at Coventry-a very wealthy man, whose lameness, the result of an accident, gained for him the sobriquet of "Hales with the club foot." In 1552 John Shakespeare was living in Henley Street, Stratford, but it was not until 1556 that he purchased houses in the town. In that year he entered into copyhold possession of two tenements, one with a garden and croft ( i.e. an enclosed plot of land), in Greenhill Street, at a
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rental of sixpence, and another with a garden only in Henley Street. But these dwellings he apparently let again, and continued to reside in the house he had first occupied in Henley Street. This tenement he bought, with its gardens, orchards, and the house adjoining, which had been previously in his occupation for business purposes, for forty pounds, in 1575. I t was in an upper story of the former of these houses that his son William was born in 1564, probably on 23d April. It is of interest to note that the nearest neighbours of John Shakespeare were on one side John Wheler, and on the other, before 159 I, George Badger, a draper, who was once constable of the town. It was, doubtless, among their children that William Shakespeare found his earliest play fellows.
It may be well to follow John Shakespeare from his first entrance into the town, and take a survey of it in his company. We shall thus gain some knowledge of that aspect of it with which his son William was familiar in his youth. John Shakespeare would have originally entered Stratford by the Warwick Road, near which Snitterfield lies, and would have found himself
on arrival at the bottom of Bridge Street, by
(There is no text on pages 121-122)
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the causeway leading to the stone bridge. Leland, the antiquarian traveller of 153°, said of the general appearance presented by Stratford to a stranger, "It hath two or three long streets, besides back lanes. One of the principal streets leadeth from east to west, and another from north to. south. . . . [ellipses are Lee’s text] The town is reasonable well builded of. timber." Passing up Bridge Street, which led on from east to west, the new-comer came upon a small row of shops and stalls in the centre of the road known as Middle Row, of which the south side was Bridge Street, and the north, Back Bridge Street. It was in Bridge Street, it will be remembered, that John Shakespeare, the shoemaker, had his stall. The row was pulled down less than a century ago to form the wide thoroughfare of modern Bridge Street. In Bridge Street stood the three chief inns of the town-the Swan, the Bear, and the Crown, of which the latter is believed to have occupied the site of the present Red Horse Hotel; and for many years a large house there, known as the Cage, and probably at one time the prison, was in the occupation of Henry Smith, a vintner. When the top of Bridge Street was reached, it
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divided into two roads-Wood Street to the left and Henley Street to the right-and the latter soon led into the country. Wood Street ran on into Greenhill Street, afterwards Moor Town's End, which, though still retaining a rural hedge, . was fringed with a few houses. Behind Henley Street lay gravel-pits belonging to the guild, which were largely used in the repair of the bridge, and in rare paving operations in the town; but no inhabitant was allowed to help himself there. At right angles to the west end of Wood Street was Rother Market, where a stone cross stood, and the borough's weekly cattle market was held, and thence lanes led to Evesham.
The chief or market cross of the town was at the head, i.e. the west end of Bridge Street, at the corner of High Street, which ran parallel to Rother Market. I t was a stone monument covered by a low tiled shed, round which forms were placed for the accommodation of listeners to the sermons, which, as at St. Paul's Cross, London, were occasionally delivered there. At a later date a room was placed above it, and a clock above that. The open space about it formed the chief market-place of the town, and [plate omitted]
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its site is now occupied by a house known as the Market-house. At the pump which stood near it housewives were frequently to be seen "washing of clothes," and hanging them up on the cross to dry, or the butchers might be detected hanging meat there; but these practices were disapproved of by the corporation, and finally forbidden in 1608. The stocks, pillory, and whipping-post were set up hard by the cross.
From the high or market cross, the street that ran in a south-westerly direction introduced
the visitor to the most substantial buildings of the town, and from the householders there the bailiff was usually chosen. In other parts of Stratford most of the houses were detached; here there were a few vacant spaces, but the houses mostly adjoined each other. The first portion was the High Street, and mainly consisted of shops. The second portion was Chapel Street, and among the large private houses there stood New Place, which in 1597 became William Shakespeare's property. The lower end of the street was known as Church Street, and at the corner, facing New Place, was the chapel of the guild~ succeeded by the school, guildhall, gaol, and almshouses. above
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the chapel-porch was a third cross, and near at hand a second pump, which was removed by the council's order in 1595, and its site filled with gravel and rubbish. Turning to the left at the end of the street, Old Town was reached, where gardens and unoccupied land surrounded several large houses. John Hall, one of the poet's sons - in -law, had a residence there early in the seventeenth century. This road ultimately led to the churchyard and to the parish church, by the banks of the river, " a fair large piece of work," as Leland describes it, ". . . [sic]at the south end of the town." Over against the church was a stately residence of the Combes, formerly the College of Stratford, and but a little way down the road that ran between its grounds and the cemetery were the river-mill and the mill-bridge, which was not pulled down till late in the present century. By the river, near the church, doubtless stood the cucking-stool for the scolding wives, and a field belonging to the town in the neighbourhood was known as the bank-croft, or bancroft, where drovers and farmers of the town were allowed to take their cattle to pasture for an
hour a day. "All horses, geldings, mares,
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swine, geese, ducks, and other cattle" found there contrary to this regulation were impounded by the beadle in the pinfold, which was situated near at hand.
The back lanes of which Leland wrote
stretched from Rother Market to the river, and intersected High Street and its continuations. The chief of them was Ely Street, or Swine Street, joining High Street at its junction with Chapel Street, and running to the A von as Sheep, or Ship, Street. Parallel with these roads were Scholar's Lane, or Tinker's Lane, crossing Chapel Street by New Place, and thence to the river bearing the name of Chapel Lane, or Dead Lane, or Walker Street. In both Tinker's and Chapel Lanes were gravel-pits, digging in which was strictly forbidden within eight feet of the road. Many cottages in the smaller thoroughfares did service as alehouses.
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End Chapter 12