For centuries, historians have debated the exact location of William Shakespeare’s London home. Now an early modern literature scholar says she has pinned down the exact spot where the playwright owned a home in the city.
In his memorial poem introducing William Shakespeare’s First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the “sweet swan of Avon,” helping lock him into the public imagination as a man of Stratford. But Shakespeare also had a close association with London.
From the late 1580s to the early 1610s, he rented rooms across the capital as his career in theatre grew. Then, in 1613, at a time when conventional wisdom says Shakespeare was retiring to Stratford, he entered London’s real estate market for the first time.
An early modern literature scholar has now identified the exact location of Shakespeare’s London home using 17th century property records.
The home was in Blackfriars, a tightly packed neighbourhood north of the Thames. It was also home to Blackfriars Theatre, where the King’s Men, the company Shakespeare wrote for, performed.
The house was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but stood on a site now occupied by Ireland Yard, Burgon Street and St. Andrew’s Hill.
Academics had long given up on locating Shakespeare’s London residence. Lucy Munro of King’s College London found a 1668 plan of Blackfriars precinct, made after the fire, that showed the size and surroundings of the property.
The house stood on the site of a converted priory and across from a tavern called the Sign of the Cock. Today, the site opposite is occupied by a pub called The Cockpit.
The post-fire plan does not show the full scale of the house, but it was large enough to be divided into two homes by 1645.
Shakespeare left the property to his eldest daughter, Susanna. Munro also found documents linked to its sale by his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall Nash Barnard, in 1665, just a year before the fire.
Munro said the find challenges the idea that the house was simply an investment property and that Shakespeare quickly retired to Stratford in 1613.
“He could have bought an investment property anywhere in London,” Munro told Artnet. “But this house was close to his workplace at the Blackfriars theater.”
That purchase came just three years before Shakespeare’s death. But at the time, Munro believes he may have seen it as a practical base for continuing his work.
His last two plays, Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, both co-authored with John Fletcher, were written in 1613. Munro said it is quite possible they were written in Shakespeare’s new Blackfriars home.
The finding also changes how one marker near the site should read.
A blue plaque attached to an office building on St. Andrew’s Hill says: “On 10th March 1613 William Shakespeare purchased lodgings in the Blackfriars Gatehouse located near this site.”
Munro says one word should be changed. Instead of “near”, she argues, “On” would be more accurate.
