Qualla: Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two entries in the same parish register, fifty-two years apart, draw most of the 200,000 annual visitors who walk down the lime-tree avenue to Holy Trinity Church. The first, dated 26 April 1564, records the baptism of Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere - William, son of John Shakespeare. The second, dated 25 April 1616, records the burial of Will Shakspere, Gent. The original Elizabethan register, in the same ink and the same hand for both entries, still exists; the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust keeps it for safety, away from candles and tourists. The church on the bank of the Avon keeps everything else: the font, the chancel, the grave slab, the curse.

Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: Older Than the Town

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Burn the asylum, CC BY-SA 3.0. Holy Trinity is Stratford-upon-Avon's oldest building. There has been a church on this riverside site since Saxon times - the present fabric dates from around 1210, raised over the foundations of an earlier monastic settlement. In the 14th century John de Stratford founded a chan...

Image: Burn the asylum | CC BY-SA 3.0

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: A Lay Rector's Privilege

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. Shakespeare was eligible to be buried inside the chancel - the most sacred section of any Anglican church - because he had bought, in 1605, a share of the parish tithes. This made him, in the language of the time, a lay rector. The arrangement was an investment as much as a statu...

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: The Curse

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Across the slab over Shakespeare's grave is carved an inscription that, oddly, never mentions him by name. It reads: 'Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.' Tradition ho...

Image: David Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: The Funerary Monument on the Wall

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John William Inchbold, Public domain. Above the grave, set into the north wall of the chancel, is the painted limestone bust that constitutes one of only two contemporary likenesses of Shakespeare - the other being the engraving in the 1623 First Folio. The monument was carved before 1623, probably by the Anglo-Flemi...

Image: John William Inchbold | Public domain

Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon: The Last Will and the Bad Spring

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mango salsa, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shakespeare signed his Last Will and Testament on 25 March 1616 in what witnesses described as a 'shaky hand'. The day after he signed it, his son-in-law Thomas Quiney was hauled before the church court and convicted of fathering an illegitimate child by a woman called Margaret W...

Image: Mango salsa | CC BY-SA 3.0