New Place

• 1. Introduction

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  New Place, William Shakespeare's final home in Stratford-upon-Avon, no longer stands. The playwright died there in 1616, and today only foundations remain beneath a specially designed garden. Yet the story of this house stretches back far beyond Shakespeare's ownership, through a tangle of poisoned heirs, defiant clergymen, and centuries of disputed titles. How did the second largest dwelling in Stratford end up demolished not once, but twice? And what did a churchwarden's fury over a mulberry tree have to do with it all?

• 2. A House Before Shakespeare

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  The corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane in Stratford sits atop ground with a remarkably long memory. Pottery has been found there dating the site to an Iron Age farmstead somewhere between 700 BC and 43 AD. The building that became New Place was constructed in 1483 by Sir Hugh Clopton, a wealthy London mercer who would also serve as Lord Mayor. Using timber and brick, which was then considered an innovation in Stratford, Clopton raised a three-storey structure with ten fireplaces, five handsome gables, and grounds large enough to hold two barns and an orchard.

  When the antiquary John Leyland visited in 1540, he described the property as a "praty house of Bricke and tymbre" where Hugh Clopton had lived out his later days and died. By then the house had already passed through several hands within the Clopton family. In 1496, Sir Hugh left it to his great-nephew William Clopton I, specifying male heirs tied to the lordship of Clopton. William Clopton I, who died on the 29th of May 1521, granted his wife Rose a life interest in the property, with the house reverting after her death to their son William Clopton II.

  Financial pressure eventually broke the family chain. On the 20th of December 1563, William Clopton III, hard-pressed to pay his sisters' marriage portions and fund his travels in Italy, sold New Place to a man named William Bott, who had already been living there for several years. Bott sold it again in 1567 to William Underhill I, an Inner Temple lawyer and clerk of assizes at Warwick, who held substantial property throughout Warwickshire. It was through Underhill's family that Shakespeare would finally enter the picture.

• 3. Murder, Poison, and a Sale

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  William Underhill I died in 1570, leaving New Place to his son, William Underhill II. In 1597 that son sold the house to William Shakespeare for sixty pounds. Then, within two months, William Underhill II was dead, and it emerged he had been poisoned by his own eldest son and heir, Fulke Underhill.

  The legal aftermath was murky. Some sources say Fulke Underhill died in May 1598 while still a minor, before the full extent of his crime had come to light. Other sources say he was hanged in 1599 for his father's murder and attainted for felony, which meant his property, including New Place, was forfeited to the crown. In 1602, the Court of Exchequer appointed a commission to obtain an account of the possessions of Fulke Underhill of Fillongley, county Warwick, described plainly as a felon who had taken his father's life by poison.

  Also in 1602, Fulke's younger brother Hercules Underhill came of age. The crown regranted his father's former properties to Hercules, and Hercules and Shakespeare then negotiated a formal confirmation of the original sale. For sixty pounds and several years of legal uncertainty, Shakespeare had secured the second largest house in Stratford.

• 4. The Hall Women and a Contested Will

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  When Shakespeare died in 1616 the house passed directly to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall. Her own daughter Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's last surviving descendant, came to live at New Place with both her mother and her first husband, Thomas Nash, who had owned the house next door.

  On the 25th of August 1642, Nash wrote a will leaving New Place to his cousin Edward Nash. The problem was that New Place still legally belonged to Susanna Hall, so Nash had no right to make that bequest. The will then vanished, surfacing only in the National Archives in 2025. Nash died in 1647, predeceasing both his wife Elizabeth and his mother-in-law Susanna. The two women obtained a deed of settlement confirming that they remained the legal holders of Shakespeare's estates. Edward Nash brought Elizabeth to chancery court the following year, demanding she honour the terms of the missing will. His bid failed.

  Elizabeth Nash married for a second time, to John Bernard, a Member of Parliament for Northampton, on the 5th of June 1649. Susanna Hall died just weeks after the wedding, and Elizabeth inherited the Shakespeare family property. The Bernards moved into New Place. When Elizabeth died in 1670, she left no surviving heirs. Her will stated, according to her own words, "according to my promise formally made to him", that Edward Nash would have the right to acquire New Place. No records survive of his ever taking ownership. The house returned to the Clopton family.

• 5. Two Demolitions

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  Sir John Clopton tore down the original New Place in 1702, replacing it with a new house in a contemporary style, also called New Place. That second building would survive only until 1759, felled by a clergyman's resentment.

  The Reverend Francis Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham in Cheshire, had grown thoroughly tired of the stream of visitors drawn to a property associated with the most famous writer in England. In 1756 he attacked and cut down a mulberry tree in the garden, a tree said to have been planted by Shakespeare himself. The townspeople retaliated by smashing the house's windows. Gastrell then applied for local permission to extend the garden. His application was rejected and his rates were raised in apparent retaliation. Gastrell responded by demolishing New Place entirely in 1759.

  The destruction outraged the inhabitants of Stratford, and Gastrell was eventually driven out of town. The house was never rebuilt. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust acquired New Place and Nash's House in 1876. Today visitors reach the site through a museum in Nash's House, the adjacent building. In 2018 the site received 109,452 visitors.

• 6. Digging for Evidence

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  Excavations in the grounds of Nash's House began in 1862, with a second round in January 1864, both led by James Halliwell-Phillipps. After those digs concluded, the ruins were covered over with a garden. Serious excavation did not resume until 2010, 2011, and 2012, when Birmingham Archaeology removed the garden from the site entirely.

  Archaeologists from Time Team visited the dig in 2011, and a programme titled "Searching for Shakespeare's House" aired on the 11th of March 2012. BBC One also broadcast a live National Treasures programme from the site in August 2011. What the excavations produced was tantalising but incomplete: findings confirmed the presence of a Tudor structure beneath the ground but remained inconclusive about the original floor plan of Shakespeare's house.

  Clay pipe fragments unearthed in the Stratford garden added a different kind of speculation. A study published in the South African Journal of Science found possible traces of cannabis, along with tobacco and camphor, in the pipes. The finding drew attention to the fact that cannabis was used medicinally by Elizabethans and also in the manufacture of sails, rope, and clothing. Researchers were careful to note that the pipes could have belonged to any number of people besides Shakespeare, and cannot be conclusively dated to his residency, since they may date from the 18th century, roughly two hundred years after his death. The foundations themselves, confirmed Iron Age to Tudor in their layering, remain the most tangible physical record of New Place, and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust continues to maintain the site as a garden open to the public.