William Shakespeare’s only London house located with newly discovered 17th century map
The location of the house where the Bard likely wrote works including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet was found on a map in the London Archives
Fans of William Shakespeare know that the great playwright came from Stratford-upon-Avon, the English riverside town where tourists still throng to see his childhood home.
But he made his name in London – though few traces of him remain in the British capital.
A newly discovered 17th century map sheds new light on the Bard’s London life, pinpointing for the first time the exact location of the only home Shakespeare bought in the city, and where he may have worked on his final plays.
Shakespeare scholar Lucy Munro, who found the document, says that it supplies “extra bits of the jigsaw puzzle” of Shakespeare’s life. And as with so many discoveries, it was partly due to luck.
“I came across it in The London Archives when I was looking for other things,” Munro says.
Historians have long known that Shakespeare bought property in 1613 near the Blackfriars Theatre, but the exact location was a mystery. A plaque on a 19th century building records only that the playwright had lodgings “near this site”.