Stratford takes its name from the crossing of the Avon by
a Roman road which ran from the Rykneild Street at
Alcester to join the Fosse Way. The settlement at this point, was part of the manor and parish of Old Stratford, which comprised the hamlets
of Shottery, Luddington, Dodwell, Drayton, Bishopton, Clopton, Welcombe, Ruin Clifford, and Bridgetown. This large area represents the estate held, as early as the 7th century, by the
church of Worcester,
and its boundaries can at some points be identified in the charters of Saxon bishops.
The name, Old Stratford, is of 13th-century origin and was probably
used to distinguish the chief manor from the various sub-manors which by then had been formed out of it. In later times it
was more particularly applied to the area round the church, including the street still known as Old Town, leading from the church to the borough.
The remoteness of the church from the centre of the town is probably to be explained by the conjecture that it occupies the
site of the monastery which existed at Stratford in Saxon
times.
From the 16th century onwards the distinction between borough
and parish was a frequent source of confusion and inconvenience. The liability of the whole parish to contribute towards the
relief of the borough poor, a point which the county justices found 'difficult and doubtful', was confirmed by the Judges
of Assize in 1628. But it was continually disputed by the inhabitants of the
'out towns', who in the confusion of the Civil Wars evaded it altogether; and they were ultimately exempt from further payments
in 1672.
On the other hand, the Elizabethan corporation found it difficult
to fill up their numbers so long as some of the most eligible inhabitants, living just outside the borough, might plead exemption
from service; while the borough justices could not punish the 'horrible disorders being at all tymes comitted about the church
and churchyard bywayes'.
The extension of the borough boundaries to include the whole parish
was therefore one of the main objects of the corporation in seeking a renewal of their original charter. The draft of a new
charter, drawn up about 1600 but never issued, actually grants this request, and in 1837 the Commissioners on Municipal Boundaries
made recommendations for extension which, also, were not acted upon.
The present municipal boundaries were fixed by the Stratford-upon-Avon
Borough Act of 1879 and by a provisional order of the Ministry of Health in 1924, by which the parish of Alveston was included
in the borough. Under the Local Government Act of 1894 the parish of Old Stratford
was divided into two civil parishes, known as Old Stratford Within and Old Stratford and Drayton, the latter being outside the borough boundaries.
The layout of the older part of the town has changed little since
the 15th century. It consists of three streets running parallel and three at right angles to the river, and seems to be an
example on a small scale of medieval town-planning, modified by early encroachments. A survey of the borough in 1252 gives
about 240 burgages, besides 47 placks of land and various shops, stalls, and other tenements.
A later survey, of 1590, which mentions 217 houses in the town
belonging to the lord of the manor, suggests that there had been little if any growth in the course of more than three centuries.
In 1590 most of the houses were concentrated in Bridge Street,
Wood Street, Henley
Street, Mere Street, High
Street, Sheep Street and Chapel Street.
The borough was bounded on the north by the Gild Pits (now Guild Street) and on the west by the line of Grove Road and Arden Street
which was the road from Old Stratford to Bishopton.
The concentration of houses in the 1590 survey shows how the town
had begun along the high road from London (The Holyhead Road), which passes up Bridge Street and divides along Henley Street
and Wood Street, to Birmingham and Worcester.
Until little more than a century ago, a line of houses known as
Middle Row, or, in medieval times, as the Shop Row, ran up the centre of Bridge Street, dividing it into Fore Bridge and Back
Bridge Street.
The crossing at the Town Hall, between High Street and Chapel Street, is variously referred to from the 15th to the 17th
centuries as the Bull Ring and the Corn Market and may also have been formed by encroachments on an original open space. The
pillory stood here in 1328, and on the house at the corner of High Street and Ely
Street was a public clock which was removed to the High Cross in 1478.
The Cross in the 'Heiestret' is referred to in 1381. It was demolished, except for the base, in the 16th century and replaced by a square two-storied structure
resting on pillars and surmounted by a cupola with a clock. It stood near the corner of High Street and Wood Street and was finally pulled down when a new Market House, now Barclays Bank, was
built at the top of Bridge Street by William Izod
and William Thompson in 1821.
Most of the timbered houses for which Stratford is now so famous date only from the rebuilding after three disastrous fires which
ravaged the town in 1594, 1595, and 1614. The fire of 22 Sept. 1594 consumed a great part of the west side of Chapel Street and of High Street, Wood Street, and Henley Street.
In the second fire, on 21 Sept. 1595, most of the damage was confined to a single large block in the centre of the town bounded
by the north side of Sheep Street, the east side of High Street, and the south side of Bridge Street. Sheep
Street which was a residential quarter in the 16th century suffered the most and none of its buildings is earlier than
the fire of 1595. Perhaps the finest building in Sheep Street, the one at number 40, was rebuilt after the fire of 1614.
These two conflagrations were said to have destroyed 200 dwelling-houses
and caused £12,000 of damage. In 1598 the Corporation, supported by the neighbouring gentry, petitioned the Lord Treasurer
that the town might be relieved from subsidies and taxes owing to the distress which the fires had caused. The fire of 9 July
1614 destroyed 54 houses and caused a further £8,000 worth of damage in less than two hours.
There was another serious outbreak, in which the damage was estimated
at £20,000, on 10 March 1641. It was alleged that all the fires 'had their beginninges in poore Tenements and Cottages wch were thatched wth Strawe, of which Sort very many have
byn lately erected there'.
The order that all houses should be roofed with tiles was in force
as early as 1583. A survey of corporation property in 1599 shows that while most of the houses in the main streets were tiled
the barns and outbuildings attached to them were very frequently thatched, and the danger of fire was increased by the practice
of converting these premises into dwelling-houses for strangers and 'inmates'. The large number of malthouses in the borough
constituted a further danger.
Immediately after the fire of 1614 it was resolved to petition
the Lord Chief Justice for some additional power to restrain the use of thatch, and in 1619 the corporation obtained an Order
of the Privy Council in virtue of which three persons were summoned to London
in 1620 to answer for their refusal to change their thatch for tiles. Presentments against thatched buildings continued to
be made down to 1665.
The first recorded use of brick at Stratford is at New Place,
'a praty howse of brike and tymbar' built by Hugh Clopton during the last quarter of the 15th century. Brick did not become
common, however, except for chimneys, until the early 1670's and then, it seems, as a result of the various schemes of development
connected with the navigation of the Avon.
Two of the earliest brick houses in the town, the Swan's Nest
Hotel and No. 5 Chapel Street, were both built in
or about 1673, and the bricks for the former are known to have been made on the site. About the same time a part of Bridge Street was also being rebuilt in brick. The fashion of
brick-fronting the timbered houses in the main streets had certainly come in by the beginning of the 18th century, and by
1730 a number of houses in High Street had been treated in this way.
A great part of Henley
Street was rebuilt or refronted c. 1750–80. Here the newly enlarged 'White Lion', built in
1753, set the fashion, which, so far as the corporation property was concerned, was probably due to a desire to improve the
appearance of the increasingly busy main road through the town to Birmingham.
The earliest plan of Stratford,
made by Samuel Winter about the middle of the 18th century, shows much the same concentration of houses as the 1590 survey.
A plan by Saunders, dated 1802, is almost identical with Winter's, but Swanwick's plan, c. 1830, shows the beginnings of expansion
beyond the borough limits. The first and most considerable development took place on the north side, beyond the Gild Pits.
Here John Payton of the 'White Lion' laid out John Street,
Payton Street, and other streets on land allotted
to him in the inclosure. The completion of the canal in 1816 greatly enhanced the importance of this colony, which is marked
by Swanwick as the New Town. Direct communication with the centre of the old town was made by the cutting of Union Street through the hitherto continuous north side of Bridge Street and Henley Street
in 1830.
At the same time a new semi-industrial area was developing along
the Birmingham road, and the 1830's saw the growth of a residential suburb along the Warwick road, though here expansion was limited, as it still is, by the
Welcombe estate. To the west of the town the process was much slower, and though the laying-out of Mansell Street, originally a foot-path into the common fields, was contemplated in 1834
it was not effected until 1877. College Street was already cut across the old College grounds by 1830 and the small streets
on the south side of College Lane were in process
of being laid out.
The Clopton Bridge
The crossing of the Avon, from which Stratford takes its name, has been of importance ever since Roman times. The first mention
of a bridge here occurs in 1235, when John son of John de Clifford confirmed a grant made by Alice his mother to William,
brother of Richard the Bridge Keeper, of the house on the bridge held by William Askestel. It
is referred to as the Great Bridge
in 1269.
In 1363 William de Buntanesdale and William del Cley obtained
a grant of pontage for three years for the repair of the bridge, which was broken down. At the south end of the bridge was
a chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, and a hermitage, probably on the site of the present Swan's Nest Hotel. According to Dugdale,
the hermitage was endowed by the Powers of Clifford with land for the repair of the bridge and these grants were confirmed
by Thomas Power when he constituted John Rawlyn to be hermit in 1444.
