Monday, October 20th
SECOND DAY | Meeting William & family
This second day we had a day to visit Stratford Upon Avon by feet. So we walked in Stratford Upon Avon and it was very nice and we could see typical english houses, all in bricks with nice windows. I think it's cute but I don't really like it. It seems small and "contracted" to me, like a puppet house.
The morning we visited Shakespeare's childhood : the house where he was born and spend his formative years. It was a typical Elizabethan house style.
William Shakespeare was not from a very rich family, his father, John Shakespeare was a Glover and had his workplace in his house. Then he became a sort of buisness man. This house that we visited first belonged to him. William's mother, Mary Arden was a member of the Arden aristocratic family.
Bought by the State in 1847 this house was restaured in the Elizabethan style. It hadn't got a lot of rooms but for the time, it was a quite compfortable house. Unless it was in a town, it looked a bit like a cottage. It had the style of South England with a countryside look.
After a little break, at 3 o'clock we continued our visit of Shakespeare's family houses. So we went to Anne Hathaway's Cottage. She was Shakespeare's wife and lived there when she was a child with her family. The cottage belonged to the Hathaway family until 1892. Anne Hathaway lived there when she was older too when Shakespeare wrote in London.
It is an Elizabethan farmhouse. It's quite big with twelve rooms and it was, i think, a pleasant place to live. There are some rooms and some very nice gardens. Like most of the houses at that time, the house has got planty of chimneys to spread heat in all the house. The biggest chimney is in the kitchen and was used for cooking. Architecture with timber framing is also a characteristic of the Tudor architecture style. The bedroom upstairs contains an Elizabethan wooden bedstead.
It was a nice place, but it was raining. The guide was very special and loved Alix because she knew what an oven was. Then we went in the shop like verytime, and it was the same articles as everytime. I did bought something !
(I just love useless things like that)
This same day we have done a lot of thing because, between the two Shakespeare's family houses we visited Stratford Upon Avon and we also saw the church and the cimetery were Shakespeare's burried.
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