| Nash's House & New Place |
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The house known as New Place was Shakespeare's family home from 1597, where he lived when not in London and where he died in 1616.
The house descended in Shakespeare's family until the death of John Barnard, the second husband of Shakespeare's grand-daughter, Elizabeth, in 1674. It was then sold to Sir Edward Walker, who left it to his daughter, the wife of John Clopton. In this way it passed back into the ownership of the family that had built it. Around 1700, John Clopton radically altered, if not rebuilt, the house. Then, in 1759, it was demolished by its new owner, the Reverend Francis Gastrell. However, there does survive a drawing, plan and description (all admittedly from memory) on which to base a re-construction of the house as it was in Shakespeare's day A five-bay timbered house fronted the street, with buildings behind, grouped round a courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard was a well. This last feature still survives today, together with some foundations and cellars which have also been exposed. With this property went a substantial amount of land comprising not only ground immediately to the rear of the house but, by Shakespeare's time, a large garden area reaching further down Chapel Lane in one direction and across the backs of neighbouring Chapel Street properties in the other. Over the years, some of this land became built over whilst other parts became detached from New Place proper. However, in the early 1860s the Shakespeare scholar, James Orchard Halliwell, led a fund-raising campaign to bring the premises back under a single ownership and to maintain them as a memorial to Shakespeare. This was achieved by 1876 and the property vested in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 1891. Soon after the First World War the gardens were redesigned in a style which would have been familiar to Shakespeare: a geometric Knott Garden, immediately to the rear of the site of New Place, and the Great Garden beyond with its long border.
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John Leland, on his visit to Stratford-upon-Avon around 1540, included in his description of the town a 'praty howse of brike and tymbar', built by Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, opposite the Guild Chapel. Referred to in his will as his 'Great House', and later as 'New Place', it was reputedly the second largest house in the town (the largest being the College in Old Town, which, until the Reformation, had housed the priests who served the parish church). The Cloptons sold New Place in 1567. Thirty years later, in 1597, it was acquired by William Shakespeare. We do not know exactly how much he paid, but a figure of around £120 has been suggested. Today this may sound a paltry sum, but, in fact, a house could change hands then for as little as £25: Shakespeare's outlay in 1597, by a man still in his early thirties, is striking evidence of his financial success as an actor and playwright in London. 
Today the site of New Place and the Knott Garden is reached through the neighbouring property to the north. This is known as Nash's House, after Thomas Nash, the first husband of Shakespeare's grand-daughter, Elizabeth, who owned it. On the ground floor, the house is furnished as it would have been in Nash's day whilst upstairs is a display illustrating the history of Stratford. 
