셰익스피어 생가(Shakespeare's Birthplace). 스트래트포드 어폰 에이번(Stratford-upon-Avon)

셰익스피어 생가(Shakespeare's Birthplace).

스트래트포드 어폰 에이번(Stratford-upon-Avon). 영국(England)

shakespeare.org.uk

 

The Birthplace in the 17th Century

The property remained in the ownership of Shakespeare's direct descendants until 1670,  when his grand-daughter, Elizabeth Barnard, died. As she had no children, Elizabeth left the estate to her relative, Thomas Hart, Shakespeare's great-nephew.

 

The main house became a tenanted inn called the Maidenhead (later the Swan and Maidenhead) following the death of John Shakespeare in 1601. Members of the Hart family continued living in the small adjoining cottage throughout the century. The two earliest inventories of the house, dated 1627 and 1648, reveal in detail the way in which rooms were used and furnished.

 

Shakespeare's Birthplace in the early-seventeenth-century.

A drawing based on the architectural and documentary evidence.

 

A reconstruction of the rear of the house after it had become an inn,

based on the 1627 inventory of the innkeeper, Lewis Hiccox.

 

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The Changing Face of the Birthplace

Like most of Stratford's sixteenth-century houses the Birthplace was built from local materials, using oak from the nearby Forest of Arden for the timber frame and stone from a quarry at Wilmcote, three miles from the town, for the foundation walls, chimneys and some of the floors. Despite alterations and restoration work over the centuries, much of the original structure of the house survives.

 

1769

The earliest illustration of the Birthplace, by Richard Greene,

shows the building with windows set into the roof, a gable and a porch.

Although the picture depicts the house standing on its own,

it was in fact one of a continuous row of properties along Henley Street.

 

1790

A drawing by John Jordan shows that by the late eighteenth century t

he roof windows and gable had been removed.

 

 

1807

This drawing by Henry Edridge illustrates the western portion of the main house

in use as a butcher's shop.

The eastern part was still functioning as an inn, the Swan and Maidenhead

 

c. 1835

By the 1830s the frontage of the Swan and Maidenhead inn had acquired a fashionable,

brick facade

 

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The Birthplace in the 18th Century

The eighteenth-century saw the continued family ownership of the property by the Harts, desendants of Shakespeare's sister, Joan.

 

At the beginning of the century, Shakespeare Hart (Joan Hart's great grandson), divided the main house. The Swan and Maidenhead inn now occupied only the eastern two-thirds of the building, while members of the Hart family lived in the remaining portion of the main house until 1793.

 

Inside the butcher's shop in 1823

                                                              A pen and ink drawing by Samuel Ireland of the

                                                              Birthplace kitchen in the late 18th century

The Butcher's Shop

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries the western portion of the main house was let to Thomas Hornby, a butcher, and his wife Mary, who also acted as self-appointed custodians of the Birthplace.

 

 

An engraving of the Birthplace dated 1788 by Philip de la Motte

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