Old Town is the handsomest street in Stratford, and Hall's Croft is its handsomest house: a large, gabled Jacobean townhouse built for Shakespeare's elder daughter Susanna and her husband, Dr John Hall, a physician with a practice that reached across the Midlands. They were the respectable branch of the family, and the house shows it — oak panelling, a fine chimneypiece and rooms designed to impress patients.
Hall left behind a casebook of his cures, and the house uses it to tell the story of Jacobean medicine in unsettling detail: the herbs, the theories of the four humours, the instruments. Behind the house is a large walled garden with herb beds, mature trees and a cafe, and because Hall's Croft sits at the quiet end of town it is almost always the calmest of the five properties.
Top things to do at Hall's Croft
See the consulting room and medical collection
Dr Hall's instruments, apothecary jars and the casebook of his treatments make this the most interesting museum interior of any Shakespeare property — grimly fascinating rather than reverent.
Admire the Jacobean interiors
The panelled hall, the carved chimneypiece and the upstairs chambers show how a successful professional family lived a generation after Shakespeare’s own childhood home.
Explore the walled garden
Herb beds planted with the medicinal plants Hall prescribed, a mulberry, mature specimen trees and plenty of benches. It is a lovely place to sit for twenty minutes.
Walk on to Holy Trinity
Hall's Croft is three minutes' walk from the church where Susanna, John Hall and Shakespeare himself are buried — the natural next stop.
How to get to Hall's Croft
- Old Town, at the southern end of the town centre, five minutes' walk from Chapel Street.
- Two to three minutes on foot from Holy Trinity Church, which makes an obvious pairing.
- The hop-on hop-off bus stops nearby on Southern Lane by the theatre.
Insider tips
- This is the property most people skip — which is exactly why it is the pleasantest to visit at midday in August.
- The cafe in the garden is quiet, good and much cheaper than the riverside places.
- Pair it with Holy Trinity Church and the riverside walk back to the theatre for a perfect low-cost afternoon.
- It is included in the multi-house ticket, so it costs nothing extra if you have already bought one.
