A Walk in the Footsteps of Shakespeare - Part 1

Last Sunday Hilary and I went for a walk, and not just any old walk, but a trek in Shakespeare’s footsteps to Snitterfield and back.

Less than a hundred yards (sorry, metres) from where I’m writing this is Shakespeare’s Birthplace, which sits like a marooned pantomime stage-set amongst the hustle and bustle of photo snapping tourists. It’s a modest half-timbered building that would have been pulled down long ago had it not been for its connection, and, architecturally, there are many much more attractive buildings in the town.

But Shakespeare was born there in 1564 (although some historians, usually the boring ones, still question it) when the house stood alone in an acre or two of its own land at the edge of the town, with a back door that opened onto the gentle rise of the Welcombe Hills. Walk out of that back door today, hop over the large iron gates and you’ll immediately get knocked down by a stream of cars heading for B & Q and Tesco’s as you try and get across Guild Street. And if you survive that mauling you’ll probably get flattened by a big red tour bus going the other way before you reach Gt William Street on the other side.

But let’s go back 435 years to when Will was 7 years old and there was no Guild Street, just a well worn track where the flocks of fattened geese, or sheep, or pigs, were herded on their way to London 100 miles away. There was no Gt William Street either (I wonder what the young Shakespeare might have thought if he’d known the footpath he took two or three times a week would end up a street named after him), just a rutted pathway that ran as straight as an arrow over the ever steeper undulations as he made his way after school to visit his elderly paternal grandparents in Snitterfield, where he feed their livestock, chopped wood for the fire, and drew water from their well; returning home with apples and pears from their orchards.

The view you get today from the top of the Welcombe Hills still gives a ghostly echo of what Shakespeare would have seen as he no doubt ran the three miles from his back door to his grandparent’s home. Michael Woods describes the view well in his book In Search of Shakespeare…

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