Stratford-upon-Avon

Britons lived here before the Anglo-Saxons, and a small Roman town grew up about a mile north-east of the centre at Tiddington, occupied from the 1st to the 5th century. The name joins the Old English for "street" — a Roman road — and "ford" with the Celtic word for river. An early monastery, probably on the site of Holy Trinity Church, gave rise to the Old Town. In 1196 the lord of the manor, John of Coutances, laid out a new town on a grid half a mile north, and Richard I granted it a weekly market. The Guild of the Holy Cross became its main institution, building the Guild Chapel in the 13th century and a Guildhall and almshouses around 1417; in 1484 Hugh Clopton paid for the stone bridge that still carries traffic over the Avon.

Wool from the nearby Cotswolds made Stratford a busy market town. The guild was abolished in 1547, and a borough charter then created a town council and refounded the school as King Edward VI School. John Shakespeare, a glover and town official, moved here in 1551; his son William was born in 1564, and later bought New Place, where he died in 1616. During the Civil War, in 1643, stored gunpowder blew up the Market Hall.

David Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 made the town a place of pilgrimage. The Avon had been made navigable in 1639, the canal to Birmingham was completed in 1816, and railways arrived between 1859 and 1861, bringing tourists. The Flower family, who opened a brewery in 1831, campaigned and raised funds for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre of 1879, the forerunner of today's Royal Shakespeare Theatre. In 1974 the borough was merged into the wider Stratford-on-Avon District.

Shakespeare shapes almost everything here. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust cares for five houses linked to his life — his birthplace, Nash's House and New Place, Hall's Croft, Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Shottery and Mary Arden's farmhouse at Wilmcote. His birthday is celebrated every year, and in 2016 events marked the 400th anniversary of his death.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, formed by Peter Hall in 1961, is the town's great institution. It runs the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, designed by Elisabeth Scott; the Swan Theatre, modelled on an Elizabethan playhouse; and The Other Place, a smaller studio space. Both main theatres reopened in 2010 after a refurbishment. Beyond the RSC, the ArtsHouse is home to the Orchestra of the Swan, a professional chamber orchestra, and there is a fringe theatre and a small community theatre.

Older customs survive too. The Mop fair, held on 12 October, is one of the largest in the country, and a literary festival has run every spring and autumn since 2008. Sheep Street recalls the centuries when Cotswold sheep were bought and sold in the town, and Scholars Lane was once Tinkers Lane, where tinkers gathered on market days to mend pots and pans. The town is the setting of the BBC detective series Shakespeare & Hathaway.

About 30,500 people lived in Stratford at the 2021 census, up from about 27,900 in 2011, and the town has grown with new housing, including 800 homes at Shottery with a relief road. The urban area takes in the former villages of Alveston, Shottery and Tiddington, alongside suburbs such as Bishopton, Bridge Town, Clopton and Old Town.

Tourism is the main source of the town's prosperity, with between 2.5 and 3 million visitors a year, and a major employer in hotels, hospitality and catering, while the RSC's three theatres bring large audiences and income. Other employers include NFU Mutual, the insurer, Pashley Cycles and the large supermarkets, and the area has boat building, engineering, food manufacture, market gardening and farming.

Most of the town lies on the west bank of the Avon, and its riverside position means flooding, including flash floods, is a recurring risk. The Stratford Town Trust, which holds the long-standing Guild and College estates, awards more than £2 million a year in grants to the local community. Daily life swings between the quiet of the residential suburbs and the crowds of the historic centre, which are thickest in summer and on performance evenings.

Stratford's eating places are geared to theatre-goers. Sheep Street, once the sheep market and now the town's restaurant centre, Waterside facing the gardens and the streets around Shakespeare's Birthplace hold most of them, from cafés to gastropubs and restaurants.

The town's pubs have a long history. One on the High Street is reputedly the oldest in Stratford, on a site where there has been an inn since medieval times. The riverside pub known as the Dirty Duck, a short walk from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, is known for its lively theatrical atmosphere; its sign reads "Black Swan" on the side facing the church. Beer was once a local industry: Edward Fordham Flower opened a large canal-side brewery in 1831, and Flower & Sons brewed in the town until 1967, when it was taken over by Whitbread.

The country around supplies the town. The Cotswolds to the south were long one of England's great sheep-rearing areas, with Stratford a centre for selling their sheep and wool, and the district still has market gardening, farming and food manufacture. On most summer Sundays a craft market sets up on the Waterside, and the villages and towns nearby have many more pubs and restaurants.