The most romantic of all the Shakespearean properties, is Anne Hathaway's Cottage, which lies in the beautiful hamlet of Shottery, just outside Stratford-Upon-Avon. The cottage can still be reached by the footpaths over the fields, as it was in Shakespeare's time, when he came to court his future wife. This is where Anne Hathaway spent her childhood and youth, until at the age of eighteen, William Shakespeare and Anne were married in 1582. Today it is called a cottage, but in the sixteenth century it was a substantial farmhouse, known as Hewlands. The cottage was owned, and lived in by the Hathaway family and their descendants, until the late nineteenth century, when it was purchased by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. |
