Anne Hathaway’s Cottage is another fascinating place…

You can walk from the centre of Stratford on Avon out to Anne Hathaway’s cottage, in what was once the Hamlet of Shottery. It is a nice thing to do if you can, as it makes you realise how far William Shakespeare would have walked to court the woman who was much older than him. He had scarcely finished his schooling days in the guildhall, or perhaps they began their affair when he was still at the school. But he definitely made an effort to meet up with Anne, it was not a casual endeavour, and you can mull over of his potential feelings and intent as you walk. While most of the walk is now through housing estates the cottage itself still feels as though it’s in a village location.

The cottage, Anne’s family home, where she was born and raised until she left when she married William, is preserved in the state it first became a tourist destination in the 18th Century. This home for sheep farmers was originally called Hewlands Farm. Its first phase was built in the 1400s, a simple long hall like dwelling that was leased to farmers by the land owner (very much like the house I live in). Unlike the guildhall in the town, this humble dwelling did not survive with many of its original features. As someone’s home it would have been updated with new fashions, and was extended as ways of living changed over the centuries. However in the 1700s they were far from modern ways of living, which means many very old structures and furniture has survived in situ.

You’ll see on these boards how the cottage changed over time to look as it does now …

What I loved most about the cottage, though, was the stories the guides told, and the best story, was why this property is so well preserved.

When Stratford on Avon became a place of pilgrimage for the famous, wealthy and other literary tourists, as I explained in my blog about why we remember and celebrate William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s descendants had fallen on hard times financially. With these travellers coming to see and touch anything that had anything to do with Shakespeare, they saw on opportunity to earn money from their deceased relative’s good fortune and opened the door of the cottage to tourists. Visitors were told tales about the love affair between Shakespeare and his then future wife Anne.

A letter from Samuel Ireland, the 18th Century author, to his friend John Jordan, explains how Susanna Taylor, nee Hathaway, had sold him the exact chair that Shakespeare had sat in to court Anne. Who knows if that ‘courting chair’ was really in the house at the time of Shakespeare. Perhaps even Susanna didn’t know if that was true or not… There were records in the house that recorded visits from many of the renowned Regency poets too. Lord Byron, Shelley, and great actors like George and David Garrick, spent hours at the cottage, visiting regularly because the setting gave them inspiration. Even though at the time it was still a simple small farm. The family were making so little the house was split into three properties so they could rent the two ends of it to others.

Then came a more wily woman. Mary Baker, Susanna’s great grand-daughter, was definitely what we would call an entrepreneur today.

Mary saw the numbers of people visiting the buildings connected to Shakespeare’s life in the town grow, and in comparison hardly anyone would walk out to Hewlands Farm in Shottery. So she had a genius money spinner of an idea, she renamed the farm Ann Hathaway’s Cottage to make sure people would know the connection. It worked, it brought an increase in visitors. She gave them tours of her home, and told tales of William’s and Anne’s love affair, even talking through where they would have made love before their wedding.

She charged for everything – for her time, to serve tea and a ‘Shakespearean pork-pie’ in the very sport where William would have made love to his Anne, and for people to drink from the well that he would have drunk from. She gave people a gift from the garden too, picking single flowers to give to visitors to keep as a memory or send to others, again supporting the sense of romantic living.

She kept a visitors book, and even Charles Dickens and Mark Twain are recorded as visiting.

Her best story/hustle that I discovered, though, were the pieces of wood she allowed her visitors to chisel off an old oak two seater settle where she claimed William Shakespeare sat beside Anne during they’re courtship. The current managers of the property, The Shakespeare Trust, know that the settle is no where near that old. It was complete nonsense and Mary Baker knew it.

It makes me wonder what other tales she made up to con these gullible visitors. Ha! Ha!

So, what is original to William Shakespeare’s days in the cottage? …

The floor! the flagstones on some of the floors, polished by so many feet, and the door frames Anne and he would have walked through.

As you can tell, this is another place I would definitely recommend you visit if you go to Stratford on Avon.

Macabre or beautiful? ~ mourning treasures

I’m going backwards again and sharing another inspiration behind the story of Entangled. I mentioned yesterday, my leaning toward the macarbe (it is definitely no wonder that I’ve ended up moving into writing thrillers). Like I said, I’d prefer to stand on Lyme Regis harbour wall watching a threatening, storming sea thrashing the stone wall, than laying flat on a sunbed on a tropical beach.

So the fascination I have with antique mourning jewellry shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Although, I don’t think I’ve shared that on my blog before. By the time of the regency period many people wore jewellry with an artfully placed lock of hair held in place by glass, to remember a loved one. It might be to remember a living person, but more often it was to remember someone who had passed. It may sound strange today, but it’s not really, they didn’t have a stack of albums or computer folders full of photographs. Perhaps they had a minature portrait, it they were lucky, often just one. Employing artists was a more expensive luxury than jewellry. There were more jewellers than artists because you can’t just learn to be a painter who can precisely capture someone’s appearance as you can learn to manipulate metals, there has to be some rarer natural skill. Therfore, a jeweller’s time was less expensive than a good artist’s. The phrase ‘paying an arm and a leg’ for something comes from the fact that a full portrait was expensive and most people, even the upperclass, would only pay for the head and shoulders. But also, someone’s hair means you retain a part of their presence.

There’s a mourning brooch at Jane Austen’s cottage museum at Chawton containing her father’s hair. If you look out for peices of jewellry in museums and antiques shops, you’ll see a lot, and some, like those in the heading images are really beautiful. I think it’s brilliant. I imagine people regularly looking at their pieces or touching them, rubbing a finger or a thumb over the glass as they think of their missing loved one. It would bring the memories and the good emotions back. Wearing a brooch or a ring with a loved one’s hair inside, meant you always had a part of the person with you.

Of course, because I love mourning jewellry, I had to weave it into the story of atleast one book ( 😉 ). Remember also that last week I told you about Ed Sheeran’s song Photograph, which is about a locket, inspiring aspects of Entangled. James, one of my Wickedly Romantic Poets, is a lover of keeping hair, and that is also an intergral part of the story which links the first book in the series to the last. He cuts a lock of Clio’s hair in the prologue of the Thread of Destiny, and he’s already wearing a ring containing the hair of his deceased mother.

I have recently discovered that I have dyspraxia as well as dyslexia and the way my mind works perhaps makes a little more sense now, because I litterally look at a piece of mourning jewellry and my mind races with questions and the desire to see and know that person. So when I saw this minature with what I think must be a lock of his hair, I had to buy it. It makes the image of him more real, giving it a 3D context.

I’ve tried to find out who this gentleman is, without any luck unfortunately, nor can I tell who owned this, his wife, mother, lover … I don’t know. It must be someone who wanted to keep him close while he was distant, because I assume it was made when he was alive, due to the painting. But then the thing with not knowing is that I have to make it up, and that’s a joy and exactly where stories begin …

I didn’t say above, but this bracelt in Beatrix Potter’s cottage is not only displaying human hair, the actual braclet is woven peices of human hair.

Oh and one more cheeky fact before I end this post, I have said it before in my Scandalous Women posts, but I’ll share it again. Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron shared pubic hair, so, I’m sure a lot of that went on too. I didn’t put that act of his in my poets novels, though. 😀