Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire is one of the most visited towns in England outside London, its fame resting entirely on its status as the birthplace of William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language and the most performed playwright in the history of world theatre. The town has been attracting visitors in significant numbers since the eighteenth century, when the celebration of Shakespeare's genius first made his birthplace a destination of literary pilgrimage, and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust now manages five houses associated with the playwright and his family.
The Birthplace on Henley Street is the most visited of the Shakespeare properties, the medieval timber-framed house where William was born in April 1564 and where his father John Shakespeare pursued his trade as a glover and civic dignitary. The house was purchased by public subscription in 1847 and saved from demolition, an act of cultural preservation ahead of its time that established the model for the National Trust and the historic building preservation movement that followed. The interior has been furnished and interpreted to recreate the domestic environment of an Elizabethan tradesman's family of middling prosperity.
Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, a short walk from the town centre, is the farmhouse where Shakespeare's wife grew up and is one of the finest surviving examples of a substantial English thatched farmhouse of the sixteenth century. Hall's Croft, the home of Shakespeare's daughter Susanna and her husband the physician John Hall, and Nash's House adjacent to the foundations of New Place, Shakespeare's final home that was demolished in the eighteenth century, complete the principal heritage properties.
The Royal Shakespeare Company's theatres on the Avon provide world-class Shakespeare performance in the town throughout the year.