The Garrick, or no. 25 High Street, is on Stratford’s historic spine and is at the heart of the town’s conservation area. It has been a Grade II listed building since 1951. It also amazing history, some of which has been uncovered as part of the Stratford Society’s Stratfire project, which is exploring the town’s history in the context of the fires of 1594, 1595 and 1614.

A building on the site of the Garrick can be traced back to 1446 when it was tenanted by John Pebworth, a barber, for 12s. He was followed by others including an Alice Poynton who, it appears, ran a brothel. The Garrick is also said to have been the place where the plague of 1564 started.

Sadly, the Garrick, and a smaller cottage at the back (no. 60 Ely Street), were both badly damaged by the fires of 1594 and 1595. At that time, the main house was tenanted by Thomas Deege, a weaver (and possibly a refugee from Flanders), who’d been in the house for decades. The tenant in the smaller cottage was a Philip Green (who’d been given a lease in 1580).

In 1595, Deege, presumably daunted by the cost of rebuilding, surrendered his lease. He was admitted to the almshouses a year later where he died within months. Green also gave up his lease in the same year. Several years later, in 1598, Richard Quiney, the future father-in-law of Judith Shakespeare, gave Green £8 (quite a lot then!) of the fire relief money he’d been authorised to collect.

The council then agreed to lease both buildings to a William Smith (the son of a wealthy mercer), on the condition that he would rebuild. A Corporation survey of 1599 suggests this had been at least partially done. The rent for no. 25, however, was paid, not by William, but by his brother Roger, who eventually took over the lease in 1607. While William had initially lodged the claim for a rebuilding lease, when his mother died in 1601, he took over payment for her house, 1 Henley Street. He continued there as tenant until his death in 1926.

The Garrick has been an inn since 1718, when it was called the Reindeer. In 1795, then called the Greyhound, it became the Garrick, in honour of David Garrick, well known for raising the town’s profile through his celebration of Shakespeare.

The building is three storeys at the front (although possibly originally two storeys), two storeys at the back and has a two storey projection off to the side, encroaching on the Tudor House next door (no. 23-24). There are some outbuildings at the back, a yard and a cellar – probably quite useful in a pub! Through a survey, historical research and dendrochronology (tree ring dating) we’ve been able to learn a lot more.

What you see on the outside is not as old as you’d think. In the early nineteenth century the building was refronted in brick and, in 1910, is described as red brick and tiled from the street but otherwise ‘old (very)’ and comprising two attic rooms, two bedrooms, the ‘Oak Room’ used by David Garrick on the first floor, and various other rooms such as a coffee room on the ground floor. If you go inside, you can see the building goes back a long way, and is divided into many small rooms, as would probably have been common back then.

But in 1913, the building changed its appearance again. As Bearman (2007) notes. ‘The Garrick Inn, genuinely timbered inside, had suffered more severely at the hands of early ‘improvers’, who had virtually replaced its timber front wall with a brick one; when this was removed, a few surviving timbers were found [built into Harvard House next door] and those were used as the basis on which to reconstruct an elaborate façade.’ This is the front we see today. The other change was the roof which is now steeply pitched with gables.

Dendrochronology on the Garrick Inn, indicates that felling of some of the trees used in the building occurred between 1588 and 1610 (95.4% probability), using local timber. While felling doesn’t necessarily indicate use, this fits well with re-construction after the 1594/1595 fire. It’s also possible that some of the timber in the building dates from an earlier time, having been reused.

‘It’s good to see tree-ring dating and documentary evidence coming together to establish a date for the building.’ Bob Bearman, StratFire Research Coordinator.

If you’ve not been to the Garrick, it’s well worth a visit. Outside, there are some interesting carvings on the brackets of the corner posts. Inside, during the 1913 restoration, a well was found, over 30 ft deep and with 8 ft of water. This is now covered over, but if you walk down the passage and look to the right, you can see where it was. You can also see a list of the building’s occupants including Thomas Deege and Alice Poynton. History is all around us, when we look for it.