Shakespeare Connected- Shakespeare's New Place: Artefacts and Inhabitants

The purpose of this Shakespeare Connected exhibition is to highlight the contribution that archaeology and the artefacts recently discovered have made to our understanding of New Place. These artefacts show us that the ground upon which New Place was constructed had already seen human occupation and activity dating back several thousand years to the prehistoric period.
The numerous developments on the site of New Place have shaped its story. This online exhibition attempts to show through artefacts that the site was once within an Iron Age farmstead, its location chosen because of the proximity to the River Avon. Objects from the 13th century reveal the development into a housing plot and the construction of the first timber-framed building on the site. The construction of New Place by Hugh Clopton around 1483 is documented and the life of its residents can be imagined thanks to its accompanying artefacts. Following the residency of Shakespeare, his family, and his descendants, New Place was demolished around 1702 and an entirely new and radically different house was built in its Place. This only survived for a few decades, as in 1759 the then owner Reverend Francis Gastrel removed all trace of the property above ground, and the surviving artefacts record these events. Evidence of earlier investigations of the site undertaken by an antiquarian scholar in the 1860’s provide us with an insight into early archaeological excavation techniques.