In his memorial poem introducing William Shakespeare’s First Folio, Ben Jonson memorably referred to the playwright as the “sweet swan of Avon,” poetically fixing him in the public imagination as a man of Stratford.
But Shakespeare also had an undeniably close association with London. From the late 1580s through to the early 1610s, he rented rooms across the English capital as his career in theater blossomed. Then, in 1613, at a time when conventional wisdom suggests 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. It was located in Blackfriars, a tightly packed neighborhood north of the Thames that was home to Blackfriars Theatre, in which the King’s Men, the company Shakespeare wrote for, performed. The house was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, but stood on a site today occupied by Ireland Yard, Burgon Street, and St. Andrew’s Hill.
The 1668 map of Blackfriars. Photo: courtesy The London Archives, City of London Corporation.
Academics had long given up on locating Shakespeare’s London residence, but Lucy Munro of King’s College London uncovered a 1668 plan of Blackfriars precinct, one created in the aftermath of the fire, that showed the size and surroundings of the property. It stood on the site of a converted priory and across from a tavern, the Sign of the Cock—today, it’s occupied by a pub called The Cockpit. Although the post-fire plan doesn’t lay out the full scale of the house, it was substantial enough to be divided into two homes by 1645.
Shakespeare willed the property to his eldest daughter, Susanna, and Munro also uncovered documents relating to the sale by his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall Nash Barnard, in 1665, a year before the fire.
Portrait of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout from the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, 1623. Photo: GraphicaArtis / Getty Images.
Munro believes the discovery questions the narrative that the house was simply an investment property and that Shakespeare made a swift retirement to Stratford in 1613. “He could have bought an investment property anywhere in London,” Munro said. “But this house was close to his workplace at the Blackfriars theater.”
In retrospect, the purchase took place a mere three years before Shakespeare’s death, but at the time, perhaps he saw it as a convenient base from which to keep on working in years ahead. His last two plays Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, which were co-authored with John Fletcher, were written in 1613. Munro feels it’s quite possible they were written in Shakespeare’s new Blackfriars home.
Whatever the truth, the historical blue plaque fixed to an unassuming office building on St. Andrew’s Hill can now be corrected. It reads: “On 10th March 1613 William Shakespeare purchased lodgings in the Blackfriars Gatehouse located near this site.” “On” would be more accurate.