Digging for the lost Shakespeare
Graham Young discovers what it is like to dig up a piece of national history – Shakepeare’s last house.
The real miracle of Shakespeare’s plays in this ever-changing world is that they have stood the test of time for more than 400 years.
In other words, the more deceitful, conniving, deluded, lonely, misguided or ambitious that Man has become with everything from his love life to his expense claims, the more the Bard’s words have increased in relevance.
Thanks to a Doctor Who-like ability to regenerate his DNA through the generations, it was announced in 2005 that it would be worth spending £100 million to rebuild Stratford’s famous RSC theatre, right next door to Waterside’s Bancroft Gardens, which have themselves since been remodelled at a cost of £3 million.
And now, to stir up even more interest, the town has devised one of its best-ever wheezes – Dig Shakespeare.
Hot on the heels of the Staffordshire Hoard discovery, which has really intensified the public’s interest in trowels, the Dig gives ordinary visitors to one of ‘Shakespeare Houses’ the irresistible chance to get their hands dirty in the hope of finding something which could prove to be of international significance.
And yet amid all of this imaginative reinvestment, comes the shocking news that the local ‘Shakespeare Country’ tourist office has just been disbanded at a cost of 17 jobs.
The office was the public face of the entire tourist industry which is said to be worth almost £1 billion to the local economy, contributing more than 60 per cent of the local GDP and employing almost 16,000 people in the wider sense.
But because Stratford-on-Avon District Council has declined to renew its own share of the contract, Shakespeare Country has been shut down in a bizarre reinterpretation of the famous old quote: ‘To be or not to be?’
How weird is that, my fools, just when Mary Arden’s Farm has just been improved?
And just when Shakespeare’s Birthplace has an expensive new visitor gallery as part of its own historical attractions.
Dig Shakespeare, meanwhile, is something else all togther. The open invitation for the public to dig at the site of one of the Bard’s houses is surely too good an opportunity for any fan to miss.
I took my two youngest children – Louie, nine and six-year-old Madison – to Day Two of the dig.
Part of the lawn had been removed at New Place, where we found grown adults lying down on the job, gently scraping away the top soil.
Sifting here and sifting there, they were slowly filling one tray after another with various potential exhibits.
Armed with mini trowels and keen to get as dirty as possible, Louie and Madison thought it was really funny to begin and they were unusually loud.
Within half an hour, though, their mood had changed completely. . . to one of total concentration.
My guide for the afternoon was Will Mitchell, a professional archaeologist with Birmingham Archaeology.
Based at the University of Birmingham, the company won the commercial right to literally Dig Shakespeare by tendering for the business.
Go for a walk with Will and he’ll keep his head down, as likely as not ready to spot a prehistoric flint from the days long before people began to stab each other with metal knives.
Gently spoken, as you might expect, he arrived in Stratford fighting fresh after finding plenty of interesting brass items at the site of the recent excavations for Birmingham’s new Central Library in Centenary Square.
Whatever it is that volunteers help Will and his colleagues to unearth at his latest dig is guaranteed to be of interest.
New Place is a collection of foundation stones belonging to the house where the Bard spent the last 19 years of his life, from 1597 until his death there in 1616.
The house was then bequeathed to daughter Susanna, wife of Dr John Hall.
It’s hard to believe today – unless they were the ancestors of future Brummies – but the house at New Place was foolishly demolished in the 18th century, robbing the visitors who now flock to Stratford from all over the world of a vital link in the Bard’s chain.
Next door, Nash’s House still survives.
It’s named after Thomas Nash, the first husband of Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth Hall, who owned the building in the early 17th century.
