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ID sylw: 105928

Derbyniwyd: 02/03/2025

Ymatebydd: Professor Ewan Fernie

I write both as a long-term resident of Wilmcote and in my professional capacity as Chair, Professor and Fellow of Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham: the world’s most important and renowned centre for the study of Shakespeare’s life, time and works. I feel it is my duty in both respects to emphasise the irreparable damage which the enormous proposed housing development would do to the historic environment of what is, quite literally, Shakespeare’s motherland. Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, lived in the handsome farmhouse in the middle of the village. His father, John Shakespeare, ‘married up’ so their son, William, had particular reason to be proud of his maternal heritage. That he was especially proud of it is signalled by the fact that he mentions the village in one of his plays, The Taming of the Shrew, a work which is not coincidentally full of references to animal and country life. What makes Shakespeare’s reference to Wilmcote even more striking is that he does not specifically mention Stratford-upon-Avon in any of his works.