The exact location of William Shakespeare's only London property can now be pinpointed to a quiet Blackfriars street, thanks to the discovery of a previously unknown floorplan.
The discovery made by Shakespeare expert Professor Lucy Munro from King's College London, not only identifies the exact place of the property Shakespeare bought in 1613 but also the layout and size.
It also paints a different picture of where Shakespeare may have spent some of his time in his later years.
The finding sheds new light on a mystery that has puzzled academics since the eighteenth century. It has long been known that in his later years Shakespeare owned a property in Blackfriars and it was thought to be part of what was known as "the Great Gate" over the entrance to the Blackfriars precinct, a major 13th-century Dominican friary.
As the dark-blue City of London plaque on the unassuming nineteenth-century building at 5 St Andrew's Hill states: "ON 10TH MARCH 1613 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PURCHASED LODGINGS IN THE BLACKFRIARS GATEHOUSE LOCATED NEAR THIS SITE".
As the phrase "near this site" suggests, so far it has been impossible to locate the exact whereabouts of Shakespeare's "lodgings", and other parts of the property's history have also been uncertain.
Professor Munro has been able to shed new light on the property by uncovering three documents – two from The London Archives and one from The National Archives.
One of these documents, in The London Archives, is a plan of part of the Blackfriars precinct, drawn up in 1668, after the Great Fire of London, which confirms the precise location and size of Shakespeare's Blackfriars house.
For the first time, Professor Munro's research paints a clear picture of exactly where this property was, how it was laid out and the buildings surrounding it. Perhaps Shakespeare would have had a drink in the neighbouring tavern at the 'Sign of the Cock' or viewed the converted friary buildings from a window.
The part of the property that spanned the gate does not appear in the post-fire plan because it had no foundation, but the other part measured 45 feet from east to west, 15 feet from north to south at the eastern end and 13 feet at the western end. The plan doesn't indicate its internal layout or rooms, but it was substantial enough to have been divided into two houses by 1645.
It has long been thought that Shakespeare retired from his London theatre career not long after he purchased the Blackfriars house in 1613, returning to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he had a comfortable life as a gentleman. However, this discovery could indicate that Shakespeare spent more time in London in his later years than has been thought.
Professor Lucy Munro, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature from King's College London said: "This discovery throws into question the narrative that Shakespeare simply retired to Stratford and spent no more time in the city. It has sometimes been thought that he bought his Blackfriars property merely as an investment, but we don't know that this is true, or that he never used it for himself. After all, he could have bought an investment property anywhere in London, but this house was close to his workplace at the Blackfriars theatre.
"We know that Shakespeare co-authored 'Two Noble Kinsmen' with John Fletcher later in 1613, and this new evidence that the Blackfriars house was quite substantial makes it not inconceivable that some of it may have been written in this very property. We also know that Shakespeare was visiting London in November 1614 – is it not likely that he stayed in his own house?"
The other two of these documents relate to the sale of the Blackfriars property by Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall Nash Barnard – the daughter of Shakespeare's eldest daughter Susanna. They tell us for the first time how and when the property left the possession of the writer's descendants and how much they sold it for.
Shakespeare's granddaughter sold the property in 1665 and, just one year later, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, like so many buildings in the city.
Professor Munro goes on to say: "I was doing research as part of a wider project and couldn't believe it when I realised what I was looking at - the floorplan of Shakespeare's Blackfriars house. It had been assumed that there wasn't much more evidence to gather about it, so research on it has laid dormant for a while. These findings really help us tell the complete story of Shakespeare's Blackfriars house and thanks to this new discovery we now know exactly where it stood."
This carefully drawn plan tells us that the property covered what are now the eastern end of Ireland Yard, the bottom of Burgon Street and parts of the late-nineteenth-century buildings at 5 Burgon Street and 5 St Andrew's Hill.
It can therefore now be said with confidence that the blue plaque on 5 St Andrew's Hill is not merely "near" the site of Shakespeare's London house, but actually on the spot.
Over the past century, occupants of the buildings which were built on the location of Shakespeare's house was have included: Judd and Co., a printing company; Stoer Brothers & Coles, manufacturers of printing inks; the National Book Association; Heeps, Willard & Co., a firm of builders; Humphries and Taplings, carpet wholesalers; and, latterly, chartered surveyors, investment managers and residents of apartment conversions.
Dr Will Tosh, Director of Education at Shakespeare's Globe, said: "Professor Munro's fantastic discovery proves there's no replacement for human graft in the archive, and our reward for her hard work is a dazzling new sense of Shakespeare the London writer. She's helped us to understand how much the city meant to our greatest ever dramatist, as a professional and personal home. We at Shakespeare's Globe are thrilled for Professor Munro, and very proud of our connection with King's College London through the Shakespeare Centre London – which was established specifically to support and champion these new stories about Shakespeare and his world."
An article on the research by Professor Lucy Munro will be published in the print edition of the Times Literary Supplement on Friday 17 April.
