Wok N Roll with us...Bob and Teri Along with Atlas and Kalani: Stratford-Upon-Avon, England Aug 5, 2019

Our tour is coming to an end. We are working our way back to London, but not without first making a stop in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. Stratford-Upon-Avon is the birthplace of William Shakespeare, born in 1564 in a house that doubled as both a house and a glove maker/wool dealer shop. Not only was Shakespeare born in the house that we toured but he spent all of his childhood and also the first five years of his married life in that home. In the home, we walked through the Shakespeare boy's bedroom where the walls were saturated with stories and superstitions of demons and fairies. Stories that would later influence Shakespeare's works. We also saw the loft that the girls in the home slept in as well as the birth room of Willam Shakespeare. If you look closely at the pictures you will see the truckle bed (trundle bed) that William Shakespeare would have slept in until he was 5 years old. Outside of the house were extensive gardens planted in various flowers that would have been common in Shakespeare's day.

About one mile from Shakespear's house is the childhood house of Shakespear's wife Ann Hathaway. This home was about three times the size of a typical cottage in the 1500s and originally sat on about 90 acres of land. While we did not tour the inside of this home it is a beautiful and cute cottage.

As we walked about the town of Stratford-Upon-Avon we were immersed in the Timber framed Tudor architecture of the Shakespeare era. We visited the Guild Chapel that was founded prior to 1269. The Shakespear family was a member of the Guild. They paid fees to join which included services of a hospital, the school and also a priest to pray for the dead. The walls of the Guild had paintings that depicted such things as the Doom, the Allegory of Death and St. George slaying the dragon. Queen Elizabeth I's Injunction (1559) ordered that all places of worship that had images of superstition and idolatry were to be removed. Following this order, Willam's father took on the task of defacing related images from the Guild's walls. He used a Limewash to do this which thankfully ended up enabling historians today to recover some of these lost images. Last we had a quick look at the school that William Shakespeare attended.

The school was known then as The King Edward VI school. Grammar curriculum was standardized for all boys throughout England at the time by Queen Elizabeth I. The school would have provided intensive education in Latin and grammar. By the end of their grammar school education, students were fluent in Latin and had become quite familiar with the drama and rhetoric of the great Latin authors.

Soon we were on our bus once again headed to London arriving in time for a lovely evening that included dinner and a theater Broadway production of Waitress at the Adelphi theater.