by Steve Newman

Created on: June 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 30, 2009

It's time to bring to your attention the Revd Francis Gastrell who not only lived in Shakespeare's last home, New Place, but also knocked it down in a fit temper in 1759.

Seventeen years earlier, in 1742, the actor David Garrick and another young thespian, Charles Macklin, were sitting under the huge mulberry tree in Shakespeare's Great Garden at New Place drinking wine with the owner, Sir Hugh Clopton. They were celebrating the 27 year old Garrick's acting debut in London as Richard III just a few days before.

Sir Hugh had recently purchased the house and garden - which had been built by the first Sir Hugh Clopton in the 15th century - to ensure it became a proper monument to Shakespeare's memory.

Suddenly the rather inebriated Garrick stood and proposed a toast:

" Sir, I propose a toast to Shakespeare's dear house, his dear garden, and his very dear mulberry tree planted by his own fair hand. May they never perish and remain forever a reminder of the People's Poet."

" Well said, Garrick," responded Sir Hugh.

" I say, jolly well said, David," responded Charles Macklin.

The three men then drank several hearty toasts to Shakespeare, his house, and his garden.

Nine years later Sir Hugh Clopton died and the house and gardens had to be sold to pay off debts, with the purchaser the aforementioned Revd Francis Gastrell, a wealthy Chesire clergyman who wanted a quiet country retreat.

What he got was visitors, thousands of them, every day, and every week, who flocked to see Shakespeare's house and gardens, and the now famous mulberry tree.

This interest in all things Shakespearean was due to our friend David Garrick, who had popularised Shakespeare so much that the theatre-hungry London crowds, who had devoured Shakespeare's works at Drury Lane, now wished to discover the Bard's origins as well. But the dour, Scrooge-like, Gastrell was having none of it, not one little bit.

In 1756 Gastrell fenced-off the beautiful garden and pad-locked the gates. When that didn't stop people breaking in and helping themselves to a branch or two of the famous mulberry tree he cut it down.

Although well within his legal rights the Town Council accused Gastrell of 'wanton vandalism', and threatened to take him to court. Gastrell, a man not phased by secular criticism told the Town Council to go hang itself, and then promptly sold the mulberry tree timber to a local watchmaker by the name of Thomas Sharp, who, as promptly, turned the wood into toys and souvenirs, then sold

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