A summer walk through the streets of Shakespeare’s hometown

Stratford-upon-Avon is the hometown of two writers at opposite ends of the literary spectrum: Shakespeare and me.

All photos © copyright Matthew Brace

There are few things more comfortingly English than a summer evening in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

The antiquarian bookstores carefully return illustrated works to their protective sleeves and close up shop. The guides and guardians of the various historic Shakespearean properties farewell the last tourists, dust the antique furniture and turn off the lights. The houses creak back to normality and the ghosts come out to play.

Day-trippers from Birmingham and London trudge back to the town’s Victorian train station, carrying dripping ice-creams and tea-towel souvenirs. They half-wish they had booked a hotel for the night so they could enjoy the evening for longer.

I know this scene well because I’m from Stratford and I return each year. On a recent midsummer visit I strolled through the streets in the evening, reconnecting with my old haunts. I ran my hands along warm brick walls in the Old Town neighbourhood and sat for a while in the Avonbank Gardens where plays—new and old—are occasionally performed in the open air.

The restaurants and bistros fired up their ovens and lit their lamps as the pre-theatre supper crowd bowled in. Bell-ringers at Holy Trinity Church began their evening practice and the peal rang out across the churchyard lime trees and the town rooftops.

Even though Shakespeare may seem to be the antithesis of today’s digital age—where information and entertainment are short-lived, tweetable and thin on detail—he and his intricate tales of love, hate, jealousy, loyalty and betrayal, and power, corruption and lies are still relevant and popular.

Stratford draws around 2.5 million visitors a year, with Americans and Australians the most prevalent and Chinese and Japanese not far behind them. Proof, surely, of the Bard’s mighty writing and the global fame of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The place has not been turned into a Shakespeareland theme park, although many have tried. Instead, Stratford has remained largely authentic. Many of the town’s buildings have been beautifully preserved. The oak panels and warped beams of the White Swan Hotel and the Indigo Hotel really have been there for more than 400 years.

Across the road from the Indigo (which was called The Falcon when I was a 17-year-old rookie pub-goer) a substantial house once stood called New Place. Shakespeare bought it when he returned in triumph to Stratford after a successful career in London. He died there too, in 1616. Since it was demolished, the site has been occupied by charming gardens and the New Place visitor centre.

Also on this street corner is the King Edward VI Grammar School, which still turns out well-read boys as it has since 1295. Shakespeare was one of them. He would have been taught Latin and Rhetoric in a room above what is now the Guildhall, on Church Street.

Visiting Stratford and love walking? Coming soon is my special Matt Brace Walks section for the best strolls, rambles and yomps around Shakespeare’s England.

You can carry on from here into the centre of the town, passing more black-and-white buildings, many from the Elizabethan period, and stopping off for a pint in the Garrick Inn, said to be the oldest pub in town.

Instead, I strolled down Chapel Lane to the riverside theatre complex, with the famous Knot Garden of New Place on my left. There are two main playhouses today: the modern Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which was re-built and opened in 2010, and the Swan Theatre, opened in 1986 as a replica of the old Elizabethan Globe Theatre in London. Nearby, down Southern Lane, is a smaller, 200-seat studio theatre called The Other Place.

Just a few doors from The Other Place, I took a seat in the beer garden in front of the Dirty Duck pub with a couple of theatre friends. The ‘Duck’ has been a favourite of actors for decades and their signed photographs still line the walls. We sipped delicious Old Speckled Hen beer and watched swans gliding under the weeping willows along the banks of the river Avon.

All seemed right with both Stratford and the world.

This an amended version of an article that first appeared in Holidays for Couples magazine in Australia.