Anne Hathaway's Cottage

Anne Hathaway's Cottage is one of the most visited and most beloved historic houses in England: the childhood home of Anne Hathaway, who became the wife of William Shakespeare. Set in the village of Shottery, just a mile from Stratford-upon-Avon, the house is a 12-room thatched farmhouse of great beauty and antiquity, dating largely from the fifteenth century and preserved with extraordinary care by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust since 1892.

The cottage — the name is somewhat misleading, for it is in fact a substantial yeoman's farmhouse of considerable size and quality — was the home of the Hathaway family for generations before and after Anne's marriage to Shakespeare in 1582. She was 26 years old when she married the 18-year-old William, and the story of their courtship in this thatched farmhouse on the edge of the Forest of Arden has captured the imagination of visitors for centuries. A carved oak settle, traditionally known as the courting settle and said to be the piece of furniture on which the young Shakespeare sat when he came to woo Anne, is one of the most famous objects in the Shakespeare story.

The interior of the cottage is displayed with period furniture, many items of which belonged to members of the Hathaway family across several generations. The rooms convey a vivid and intimate sense of comfortable yeoman domestic life in Tudor and Jacobean Warwickshire, with particular emphasis on the furnishings and household objects that would have been familiar to Anne and her family. The Great Hall, bedrooms, and kitchen are all accessible and thoughtfully interpreted.

Beyond the house, the gardens are a major attraction in their own right. The cottage garden, planted with cottage flowers and traditional plants, is at its most beautiful in summer and has been designed to evoke the kind of garden that might have surrounded the house in Shakespeare's time. Beyond the cottage garden, a Victorian garden includes a magnificent collection of trees planted in homage to plants mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poetry, creating a literary landscape that rewards exploration.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust manages five properties in and around Stratford-upon-Avon connected to Shakespeare's life, and Anne Hathaway's Cottage is consistently one of the most popular. A combined ticket allows access to all five properties and represents excellent value for those wishing to explore the full Shakespeare story in his home town.