New Place

• 1. Origins And Early Ownership

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  Pottery shards dating to the Iron Age lie beneath the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane in Stratford-upon-Avon. These fragments mark a farmstead that existed between 700 BC and 43 AD before any stone or timber structure rose there. The current site of New Place was built in 1483 by Sir Hugh Clopton, a wealthy London mercer who later served as Lord Mayor. He constructed a three-storey house using timber and brick, an innovative material choice for Stratford at the time. The building featured ten fireplaces and five handsome gables with grounds large enough to hold two barns and an orchard. In 1496 Sir Hugh Clopton left New Place in his will to his great-nephew William Clopton I. William Clopton I died on the 29th of May 1521 and granted his wife Rose a life interest in the property. She remarried Sir Giles Greville after her own death on the 17th of August 1525. John Leyland visited the estate in 1540 and described it as a praty house of Bricke and tymbre where Hugh lived in his latter days. By November 1543, William Clopton II leased the property for forty years to a surgeon named Thomas Bentley. After Anne Bentley remarried Richard Charnock, William Clopton II retook possession of New Place. His son William Clopton III inherited the home in 1560 but sold it on the 20th of December 1563 to William Bott.

• 2. Shakespeare's Acquisition

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  William Underhill II died on the 31st of March 1570 leaving New Place to his son Fulke Underhill. The younger William Underhill had purchased the property from Bott in 1567 for £60. A complex legal history emerged when William Underhill II died two months later in 1597. Some sources claim he was poisoned by his eldest son and heir Fulke Underhill. Other accounts state that Fulke Underhill was hanged in 1599 for murdering his father. In 1602 the Court of Exchequer appointed a commission to obtain an account of the possessions of Fulke Underhill who had taken the life of his father by poison. When Fulke's younger brother Hercules Underhill came of age in 1602, his father's former properties were regranted to him. Shakespeare negotiated a confirmation of the sale with Hercules Underhill. The final concord between William Shakespeare and Hercules Underhill confirms Shakespeare's title to New Place in Michaelmas 1602. This transaction marked the acquisition of what would become Shakespeare's final place of residence in Stratford-upon-Avon.

• 3. The Shakespeare Family Tenure

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  In 1616 the house passed directly to Shakespeare's eldest daughter Susanna Hall who lived there for some time. Her daughter Elizabeth Hall lived in New Place with both her mother and her first husband Thomas Nash. Thomas Nash wrote a will on the 25th of August 1642 leaving New Place to his cousin Edward Nash. He had no legal right to do so as the house still belonged to Susanna Hall. This will went missing in the nineteenth century and was only rediscovered in the National Archives in 2025. After Nash predeceased both his wife and mother-in-law in 1647, the women obtained a deed of settlement confirming they were still the legal holders of Shakespeare's estates. Edward Nash took Elizabeth Nash to chancery court the following year demanding she honour the terms of her late husband's will. His legal bid was not successful. Elizabeth Nash married John Bernard MP for Northampton on the 5th of June 1649. Just weeks after the marriage Susanna Hall died and Elizabeth inherited the Shakespeare family property from her. The Bernards moved into New Place. On her death in 1670 Elizabeth left no surviving heirs. Her will stipulated that Edward Nash would have the right to acquire New Place but there are no records of his having ownership. The house was returned to the Clopton family.

• 4. Demolition And Controversy

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  In 1702 Sir John Clopton demolished the original New Place building in Stratford-upon-Avon. He replaced it with a modern-style house also called New Place in a very different contemporary style. In 1756 then-owner Reverend Francis Gastrell attacked and destroyed a mulberry tree in the garden said to have been planted by Shakespeare. The vicar of Frodsham Cheshire had become tired of visitors coming to see the site. In retaliation the townsfolk destroyed New Place's windows. Gastrell applied for local permission to extend the garden but his application was rejected. His tax was increased so Gastrell retaliated by demolishing the house in 1759. This greatly outraged the inhabitants and Gastrell was eventually forced to leave town. The second structure never stood again after this demolition. Only the foundations remain today at the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane.

• 5. Archaeological Excavations

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  Excavations in the grounds of Nash's House were initially carried out in 1862 and January 1864 by James Halliwell-Phillipps. After the excavations were finished, the ruins were eventually covered up by a garden. Further excavations took place during 2010, 2011 and 2012 by Birmingham Archaeology removing the garden from the site all together. Archaeologists from Time Team visited the dig during 2011. A special programme on the subject titled Searching for Shakespeares House was transmitted on the 11th of March 2012. BBC One National Treasures broadcast a live programme from the site in August 2011. Findings from the excavation indicated the presence of a Tudor structure but were inconclusive as to the ground plan of Shakespeare's original house. The site received 109,452 visitors during 2018. Today the site is accessible through a museum that resides in Nash's House which stands next door.

• 6. Cannabis Pipe Speculation

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  Clay pipe fragments unearthed in recent years in Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon garden were found to possibly contain traces of cannabis. These findings appeared alongside tobacco and camphor based on results published in the South African Journal of Science. This has fuelled speculation by some that Shakespeare may have possibly smoked cannabis. Cannabis was known to have been used to treat certain medical conditions at the time by Elizabethans. It was also used in the manufacture of materials such as sails rope and clothing. The pipe fragments could have belonged to any number of other persons besides the famous playwright. They cannot be definitively dated to the periods of his residency there as they could have been from the 18th century around 200 years after Shakespeare's death.