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| Ann Hathaway's Cottage |
There is no regular bus taking you to
Ann Hathaway's Cottage, unless you use the hop-on-hop-off bus service, which costs around £14. However, it is walkable. We downloaded a walking map from the website. The route takes you along footpaths and a park and is very pleasant. From the town it is about two miles. We were starting from our holiday apartment, so cut off a bit of the route as we were approaching from a different direction.
The village is really cute, and Ann Hathaway Cottage is stunning. Surrounded with gardens, including an orchard, sculptures and an area with fruit and veg using old methods for growing. Before you reach the cottage we had to take our photos sitting at the viewing point with the cottage behind us.
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| Viewing point |
The cottage itself is so interesting, and like other house, it has been extended over the years. Mary Hathaway Baker, a descendant of Anne's older brother Batholomew (who took over running the farm after his father died) was a very inventive woman. She may indeed be the first ever tour guide! She opened the house to welcome visitors and charged sixpence. She gave them tea and told them stories, including about the settle which she claimed was used by William and Ann during their courtship. Afterwards she would use a knife and pick off bits from the settle to give visitors to take home as a souvenir! However, the settle is not the original, but who was to know? The settle (the replacement) is still there and you can see where bits have been hacked off to give to visitors. By the way, 'settle' means to settle down/sit. I've never thought about that before.
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| The settle is to the right, the so-called courting seat! |
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| The settle with its hacked of bits of wood |
In those days winters were extremely cold, so the family would have used the rooms closest to the fire and the others would have been for storage. Earliest dates for tours of the house date from 1742, but in 1838, due to finacial difficulties, the Hathaway's had to sell. Shakespeare's Birthplace bought the cottage and the family stayed on as tenants until 1911 when the Hathaways finally left, though Mary died in 1899.
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| The turning handle to tighten the bed strings sits on the chest |
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| Marriage document for William Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway |
Today, each room is filled with furniture of the time and I learned something else. The saying 'sleep tight', comes from the time when strings ran under the mattress of a bed. These loosened over time with the weight of mattress and body weight, so a handle was used to tighten the strings. How very clever. To learn more about Mary Hathaway Baker and the cottage, please click here.
We really enjoyed our visit to the cottage and all the gardens. Afterwards we walked back into Stratford, stopping off at Holy Trinity Church where the Shakespeare's are buried. It is not known where the Shakespeare twins, Hamnet and Judith were buried in the graveyard, but two trees have been planted in their memory.
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| Holy Trinity Church. Bible were so valuable that they were chained. |
After a late lunch, we took a boat trip on the River Avon, a nice peaceful meander on the water.
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| A view of Holy Trinity Church from the river |
That evening we went to the Attic Theatre to see The Complete Jane Austen Collection (sort of) performed by Tread the Boards Theatre Company. It was hilarious. Three actors (two ladies and one man), plus a cardboard cut-out of Colin Firth acted out all the books. It was fast paced with modern jokes and so funny to watch. Highly recommended. It was said that 'if you don't know anything about Jane Austen now you still won't at the end!' It was the perfect way to end our visit to Stratford-upon-Avon.
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| The canal |
One day I'll revisit. There are still things I'd like to see. We didn't go to the RSC or have time to walk along the canal. It was a shame there were no Shakespeare plays on while we were there, but it would be good to see a play another time.
For a joint 70th birthday mini-break, I think we did alright. A great choice. And to top it all the moon rose behind the giant wheel on our last evening.
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| High Street |
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