Why do we remember and celebrate Shakespeare’s birthplace?

William Shakespeare died over 400 hundred years ago and yet today most people know who he is and where he came from, not only in the UK, but across the English speaking world and beyond. Why?

Earlier this year, I decided to visit Stratford upon Avon, birthplace and home of young and old William Shakespeare, a preserved treasure of Tudor England. I didn’t actually stay in Stratford Upon Avon for the Shakespeare experience; I am a life-time member of the National Trust and there are lots of historical properties to visit locally, as well as the town being a lovely place to stay with lots to see without having to get in a car. And, you know me, I love a historical setting – so the prefect place for a little holiday. I have so much to say about Stratford upon Avon my mind is brim-full with blogs and I’ve been holding on to them for ages and not had the time to write them up. But it means I am going to have to be careful to get my dyslexic/dyspraxic brain to stick to one theme per blog and not take you down lots of different, muddled rabbit holes.

So for today, I am going to answer the above question, an answer I discovered during in my stay, and was really surprised by because I’d assumed that Stratford upon Avon was a destination place from Shakespeare’s lifetime onwards. No …

The first hint that there was something I didn’t know about the history of the pilgrimage Shakespeare’s fans make, references my last post including my fascination with graffiti. On the first day of our stay, we walked along the bank of the river Avon and came across Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried, and was baptised.

Before we entered the church I spotted on the riverside wall a lot of graffiti. It’s actually very unusual to see historical graffiti on the outside walls of a church. I’ve never seen it before… My husband and I, however, noticed that a lot of carvings were from the 1800s onwards. This was also unusual.

Then I read about the Shakespeare Jubilee established by David Garrick, a successful and famous actor in Georgian England. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/david-garricks-shakespeare-jubilee/. “In 1769, David Garrick threw a party that put Stratford-upon-Avon on the map as a tourist destination for Shakespeare fans.”

Shakespeare’s birthplace had not been celebrated until David Garrick put it on the map as a place to be seen. Though, his idea failed at the time – an outdoor display of theatre was washed out by the weather. But his initial desire was followed through as King George III was succeeded by his son as Prince Regent who became King George IV. In the Regency period of ‘romantic’ fashions what could be more romantic than treasuring the man, Shakespeare, who created such wonderfully romantic and powerfully dramatic works!

While Garrick’s original festival was a bit of a disaster, the idea stuck. He used the material of his planned celebration in theatres across Britain and Europe and then… “In 1816 Stratford held an organised commemoration of Shakespeare’s death for the first time. The festival was closely modelled on Garrick’s Jubilee and was organised by the sons of those committee members who had been involved with it,” and, “In 1824 the Shakespeare Club was founded in Stratford.” This, therefore, alluded to why so much of the graffiti on the church wall of Shakespeare’s burial place came after this era. “Three years later the 1830 Jubilee attracted nationwide interest and even received Royal Patronage.”

A medal struck for the 1816 Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford upon Avon then became one of the most ‘romantic’ and ‘fashionable’ places to visit. Celebrities of the time, all the romantic poets, are recorded as visiting the town in the 1800s. It became a pilgrimage destination for writers and painters alike.

What I think is particularly wonderful about this adulation for Shakespeare’s home town that began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is that it meant Stratford upon Avon was saved from being completely dressed in Georgian architecture. What I mean by this is shown in the town where I live…

The Castle Town of Devizes, like many towns in Britain, in appearance is full of properties built in the Georgian period…

But behind the scenes…

Because the Georgians, in the 1700s, travelled the world, and were inspired by European architecture, they wanted their properties in our towns to look like the grand places they’d seen in Europe – resembling Roman and Greek buildings. They wanted the outside of their properties to be an architectural artwork, with blind pilasters, balustrades and carvings. Of course, rebuilding would cost a lot of money, so often, the Georgians just built a new front wall, literally face-painting our medieval towns. This is most apparent in the pictures top left in the above two galleries, the wooden framed walkway is behind the front door of Parnella House in Devizes marketplace. But because Stratford upon Avon was being celebrated for its historical beauty in remembrance of Shakespeare’s life, the Georgians restrained this desire and left much of the Tudor and earlier architecture untouched…

So, we have David Garrick’s 18th century failed jubilee and then Stratford upon Avon town Corporation’s investment in continuing this theme, and lastly those who established Stratford’s ‘Shakespeare Club’ in 1824, to thank for preserving the historical buildings in the town, and for it’s recognition as the home town of Shakespeare. That is why so many people still visit Stratford upon Avon today.

“In the words of Mrs Hart – a descendant of Shakespeare and one time custodian of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, ‘People never thought so much of it till after the Jubilee’.”

Quotes taken from – https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/aftermath-jubilee/

There’s lots more for me to say about the things I discovered, and the places I visited in and around Stratford upon Avon, so follow my blog if you don’t want to miss a post.

Tracking Down Tudor Graffiti

If I could pin down a point in time when I first became fascinated by historic graffiti it might be the first time I saw the wall carvings in The Beauchamp Tower, in The Tower of London. I remember scanning it for ages. Some well known prisoners and lesser known prisoners were locked up in The Beauchamp Tower for years at a time during the reigns of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, the amount of days they had time to pass means some of the graffiti is very detailed.

It was one of those moments that made me stop and think about the individual – the human – who had worked on the image with a knife in their hand carving out every detail for hours, standing or sitting in exactly the same space I was hundreds of years before me. Being a storyteller, my mind immediately leaps to trying to get into their minds. What were they thinking as they worked? How did they feel at the time?

Anyway, ever since then, I hunt for historic graffiti where ever I think it’s likely I’ll see it, and if you’ve followed my blog for a while you will have seen me post about it when I do find it. Cathedrals are great for graffiti, around the choir stalls and in any other areas where people would have stood for some time. On the backs of pillars in the nave and in all sorts of areas outside the central nave. My husband is now as fascinated as I am and we usually try and find the oldest mark as people mostly write the year and their name or initials. You will not find very much on the normal pews though, pews were quite a late addition to churches and cathedrals the nave was originally an open standing space.

Ruins are another great place for historical graffiti, castle ruins, or follies in gardens. This usually dates from the Georgian, Regency or Victorian periods or later. These are places were people would have visited with others and perhaps talked to one another as they carved. These carvings are mostly in soft stone work, like the sandstone used in Georgian buildings, because people did not have years to carve and were tempted by an easy target.

But anyway, this post is really about a particular piece of graffiti my husband spotted in a church porch in a village just down the road from us.

You may remember that a while ago I did a lot research to try and find out how old my house is. You can find those posts on the Index page under the heading ‘The History of a House on an English Village Green’ .One of the owners I discovered, who owned this land and quite a few local manors and their land from 1597, was a clothier called Edward Long. From what I can tell he bought all the manors to own the land to rear sheep. None of the family lived where our house is. Their main place of residence was in a village a short way down the road from us, in Steeple Ashton, it would have been known only as Ashton originally.

So, when we had nothing to do one day recently, I said to my husband, ‘Can we go and look at the church in Steeple Ashton?’ I know the Longs had a lot of money at the time, their names are still used in lots of places near us, in pubs and village names, and I wanted to see if the family graves were in the church. When we walked up to the church I was very surprised to see something very different from an average village church.

Steeple Ashton Church is unlike most churches that are predominantly medieval, it is Tudor. A Tudor church. There is a contemporary record of the church being built in the Tudor period, ‘When Leland visited Steeple Ashton c. 1540 he remarked that ‘it standithe muche by clothiars’ and named two, Robert Long and Walter Lucas, who had assisted in the building of the parish church.‘ At the time the church had a notably tall steeple but the steeple fell when it was hit by lightning not long after it was first built.

Another difference was that churches rarely contain graffiti. Perhaps because they’ve been continually used by local people who want to keep their church smart, they would have removed graffiti at the time, as we’d remove it today. Or perhaps because churches are smaller people can’t hide for long enough to carve. But anyway, here is where Steeple Ashton Church is different again, because I started noticing some graffiti in the church porch, and then… My husband spotted one of the oldest pieces of graffiti we have seen. 1579. Certainly the oldest piece we’ve come across by accident.

Graffiti in Steeple Ashton Church Porch

In 1579, when Antoni wrote his name on this wall, Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, and still relatively young. Shakespeare was alive and writing his plays. Raleigh was sailing around the world discovering other lands and plants previously unknown in Britain.

Interestingly, in my heading images, is another piece of graffiti we spotted dated to the 1500s. This was in Canterbury Cathedral. It’s interesting that both 7s and 9s are carved with long tails which must have been the style of writing then.

Graffiti in Canterbury Cathedral

So we have found an earlier carving by eighteen years. Fascinating.

If I can find out anything about Antonio Passhant, I will tell you more one day. But I am just so excited that after all these years of searching historic graffiti, the oldest, well with a date anyway, is about fifteeen minutes away from where I live!