In which we visit five Shakespeare sites in one day : Anne Hathaway's Cottage

Popularly known as Anne Hathaway's Cottage -- despite the fact that Shakespeare's wife was known for most of her long life, of course, as Anne Shakespeare -- this house in the village of Shottery was known then and long afterwards as Hewlands Farm.  It was the home of Anne's parents and later her brother Bartholomew, and remained in the Hathaway family until the 1840s, and they continued to live and farm there as tenants for another fifty years.  The lower part of the house dates from about the 15th century, while the upper is 17th-century, possibly added by Bartholomew.

Like all of the SBT properties, the cottage is furnished as it would have been in the Shakespeares' day, as if the residents might have just left the room, and in some cases costumed docents go about daily activities in just the same way as the residents would.  Alas for us, we arrived at the very end of visiting hours, and there was hardly a soul there, always seeming rather tantalizingly out of sight.