Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, is a pleasant town of Warwickshire, 8 miles SW. of Warwick, 22 SSE. of Birmingham, and 110 NW. of London. It stands on the right bank of the quiet Avon, which here is spanned by the 'great and sumptuous bridge' of fourteen pointed arches, 376 yards long, that was built by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Hugh Clopton, who died in 1496. 'shakespeare's House,' where the poet was born on 23d April 1564, in Henley Street, is national property, having been bought for £3000 in 1847, and restored in 1858-59; here are a Shakespeare museum, the ' Stratford portrait,' and the signatures of Byron, Scott, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, etc. King Edward VI.'s grammar-school, where Shakespeare was educated, was founded in the reign of Edward IV.; it occupies the upper story of the old guildhall, and was restored in 1892. The ' New Place,' built by Sir Hugh Clopton, was purchased by Shakespeare in 1597, and here he died on 23d April 1616; here, too, Queen Henrietta Maria stayed in 1643. It (or rather its successor, 1703) was wantonly razed in 1759 by the Rev. F. Gastrell, who also felled the poet's mulberry, beneath which Garrick was regaled in 1742; but its site has also become national property since 1861. And lastly, uprearing its spire above the lime-trees, there is the beautiful cruciform church, Early English to Perpendicular in style, having been gradually rebuilt between 1332 and 1500. In the chancel, whose two years' restoration was completed in 1892, is Shakespeare's grave, with the portrait bust (1616) by Gerard Janssen or Johnson, Anne Hathaway's grave, and the American stained-glass window of the 'seven Ages.' The Shakespeare Fountain (1887) was also erected by an American, Mr George W. Childs; the red-"brick Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, seating 800 spectators, was built in 1877-79 at a cost of £30,000. In the neighbourhood are Shottery, with Anne Hathaway's cottage (purchased for the nation in 1892 for £3000); Luddington, where tradition says she was married; Charlecote, the seat of the Lucys; Clopton, with memories of the Gunpowder Plot; and Welcombe Hill, crowned by an obelisk (1876), 124 feet high, to a Manchester M.P. In Stratford itself still remain to be noticed the chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross (13th century; the chancel rebuilt about 1450, and the rest by Sir Hugh Clopton); the half-timbered house of the Harvards (1596); the town-hall (1633; rebuilt 1768-1863), with Gainsborough's portrait of Garrick; the corn exchange (1850); the market-house (1821); the College school (1872); a Roman Catholic church by Pugin (1866); and a hospital (1884). Before 691 a Saxon monastery stood at Stratford-on-Avon, which was incorporated in 1553. It is an important agricultural centre; still, its chief prosperity depends on the pilgrims (20,000 or so annually) who visit it. Pop. (1851) 3372; (1901) 8310, an increase largely due to the extension of the borough boundary in 1879. See works by Washington Irving (1821), Hawthorne (1863), Wheeler (1806), J. O. Halliwell-Phillips (1863-85), S. L. Lee (1884), and C. S. Ribton Turner (1893).