At Shottery, a few minutes from Stratford, this charming timber-framed, thatched farmhouse was the childhood home of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife. It was here, tradition says, that young William came to court her — and the place today embodies the idyll of the poet's beginnings.
The Hathaways' farm
The oldest part of the house goes back to around 1463; the Hathaway family owned it from 1542. It was in fact a substantial farm — called 'Hewlands Farm', with more than 90 acres of land — and not a mere 'cottage' in the modern sense: the word here means the Tudor vernacular dwelling, timber-framed and daub-filled, the archetype of the English rural house of the Renaissance. Anne grew up there; her father, Richard Hathaway, died there in 1581. Her brother Bartholomew enlarged the farm in the early seventeenth century.
Shakespeare's idyll
It was to Anne Hathaway that William Shakespeare, eight years her junior, was united in 1582 — she was twenty-six, he eighteen, and she was already pregnant with their daughter Susanna. The Shottery farm is thus the setting of the playwright's youth and courtship, before his departure for London and glory. The place, with its Tudor interiors and its gardens planted with species cited in his work, keeps the memory of this love story at the origins of the greatest of poets. To see: the Tudor interiors and furniture, the timber frame, the gardens (the 'Miss Willmott's garden', 1920) planted with species evoked by Shakespeare.
Did you know?
A piece of furniture in the house is traditionally called the 'courting settle': it was there, local legend says, that young Shakespeare came to court Anne. Nothing proves it, of course — but the Shottery farm has fed, century after century, the romantic imagination attached to the poet's loves, to the point of becoming a place of pilgrimage for lovers.
Notes
Anne Hathaway's Cottage lies at Shottery, Warwickshire (about 1.5 km west of Stratford); a museum of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, open to the public. Hours to check.
Quiz
- Who spent their childhood in this farm?
- Anne Hathaway, future wife of Shakespeare
- Queen Elizabeth
- Mary Arden
- In what year did Shakespeare marry Anne?
- In 1582
- In 1616
- In 1500
- What was this 'cottage' really?
- A substantial farm (Hewlands Farm, 90 acres)
- A royal palace
- A mere hut