Wednesday 15 September 2021 with Nat Alcock – A Tale of Three Houses: Wilmcote, Warwickshire and the Shakespeare Family
The vernacular houses in Wilmcote, near Stratford-upon-Avon, are mainly timber-framed houses dating from the 14th century onwards, though the village also includes stone-built terraces of 19th century quarrymen’s cottages. This talk will examine the character and individual histories of the houses, setting them in their social context. In particular the research has thrown an unexpected light on the connections of William Shakespeare and his family with three houses in the village and corrected a centuries-old mis-attribution.
The evidence used ranges from the 1910 Domesday hereditament maps and Field Books at TNA and title deeds, to architectural recording and tree-ring dating.
Nat Alcock is an Emeritus Reader in the Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick. In parallel with his scientific career, he has made a lifelong study of vernacular architecture and social history, and is a past president of the Vernacular Architecture Group. He has published extensively in these fields, particularly on the correlation of documentary and architectural evidence for buildings. He is the author of the handbooks, Documenting the History of Houses and Tracing History through Title Deeds: A guide for family and local historians (2017), the major regional study, The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England (2013) and most recently jointly edited and contributed to Cruck Building: A Survey (2019).
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