17th-Century Map Pinpoints Shakespeare's London Property

A newly discovered 17th-century map has revealed the exact location of William Shakespeare's only property in London, offering fresh insights into the playwright's life in the city during his later years.

The document, uncovered by Shakespeare scholar Lucy Munro in the London Archives, pinpoints the dwelling to 5 St Andrews Hill in the Blackfriars district. Historians had long known that Shakespeare purchased the property on March 10, 1613, near the Blackfriars Theatre, which he partly owned. However, its precise site remained a mystery, with a City of London plaque on a nearby building noting only that the playwright had lodgings "near this site." The map, drawn up in 1668 shortly after the Great Fire of London, depicts the house as a substantial L-shaped structure carved from a former 13th-century Dominican friary. The friary had been repurposed for secular use following the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII in the mid-16th century.

Munro, a professor of Shakespeare and early modern literature at King's College London, described the find as providing "extra bits of the jigsaw puzzle" of Shakespeare's life. She stumbled upon it while researching other topics....