Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).
Mary Shakespeare (nee Arden) was the mother of William Shakespeare and this farm is her original farm and is now a working Tudor farm where people can visits and experience life as Mary and her son, William, would have known it.
These are the activities available for visitors to the farm per the website which you can find here https://www.visitstratforduponavon.co.uk/attractions/mary-ardens-farm:
A great day out for all the family! Explore the farm yard with its centuries-old barns and original dovecote
Geese herding, falconry displays and rare breed animals
Hands on archery*
Watch the Tudor farmhands at work
Nature trails & adventure playground
New Mary Arden’s Story exhibition
Gift shop and café
Here are a few of my pictures from our visit in 2018:
Door to room where cider was made 
Me outside the front of the farm house 
Tiny door in the house 
Cattle sheds 
Door to outbuildings 
The falconry door
Kitchen 
Dining room 
Main bedroom with child’s bed 
Sleeping quarters for the farm hands 
Baby’s crib 
Cider press
Join in Thursday Doors at No Facilities blog here: https://nofacilities.com/2021/04/08/naubuc-again-thursday-doors/
roberta-writes.com 
Loved the tour as well as the doors. What a cool place!
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Oooo, love, love, love! New item to add to my bucket list!
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An interesting post, Robbie, and I appreciate the information. As you say, a great day for a family outing. Wonderful photos! You remind me how everything appeared smaller, such as the doors and beds. A generation of shorter and smaller people.
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I love visiting places like this. Great pictures.
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These are always fascinating…thanks for sharing the terrific photos and info!
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Thank you, John. Stratford-upon-Avon is a wonderful place to visit. You should take Alex there one day. They have lovely places to eat too.
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Yes indeed, I’d love to see it!
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Excellent photos, Robbie. Thank you for the tour 🙂
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My pleasure, Mae. I am fortunate to have visited some wonderful historical places. Stratford-upon-Avon was a highlight.
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Great photos of a very interesting place. I’ve not been there but have visited Kentwell Manor in Suffolk several times: it is a Tudor Manor House, complete with moat and drawbridge, and pre-Covid they had several recreations of Tudor life each year. Fascinating stuff!
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Hi Clive, Kentwell Manor, how did I miss that out? Thank you, I have written it on my [long] list of places to visit. My favourite castle is Dover Castle, it just speaks to me and when I visit the hospital in the tunnels, I can just imagine it as a working hospital during the war. You are very lucky to live in the UK, Clive. The British are great preservers of history. Without the British and their penchant for recording history through letters and diaries, must less would be known about many historical events.
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It’s well worth it if you get the chance, but only when one of the recreations is on. I was born and brought up in Dover, eight years after the end of WW2, so I saw a lot of the rebuilding going on, and visited the castle often. The GP I had as a kid had been a surgeon there during the war. She was a local legend, but never spoke about it. We’ve had a lot of history to record here!
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I would LOVE to visit Mary Arden’s farm! Cool pics, Robbie.:-)
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Between you and me Priscilla, Mary Arden’s farm was the best place we visited of the three Shakespeare homes. We had to miss out the fourth as we ran out of time. I am not a quick tourist. It is a working farm and you can watch people doing things. It is fascinating.
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looks wonderful. did your boys get to try the archery? And in a strange coincidence, I was doing a crossword puzzle the other day, and the clue asked for Shakespeare’s mother. I did not know the answer, but now I do!
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What fun, Jim. I learn a lot from blog posts too. And often take notes about places. Sue Vincent used to send me emails with places to visit in the UK. I will really miss that correspondence when the world opens up again soon. Michael tried the archery. He is completely fascinated by sword fighting. As a lad, he was always dressed up as a ‘hero’ with a sword fighting injustice in the world
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I thought I remembered one of your sons was into armor and such, so that it seemed like archery would appeal to him. How nice that you had that connection with Sue. I’m not sure if you follow Mike at A Bit About Britain https://bitaboutbritain.com/ but he provides a wealth of knowledge of places to visit as well, all deeply researched…
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Hi Jim, thanks for the link. I have one of Mike’s books which I plan to read soon. I didn’t actually follow his blog but will do so now. Thanks again.
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If his book is like his blog, I am sure it will be fascinating and thoroughly researched.
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This farm looks like a wonderful place to visit, I love the interior photos, especially the kitchen and dining room.
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I greatly enjoyed the photos of your visit! My husband was saying just the other day how much he misses our trips to historic sites.
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It is getting closer now, Liz. We will be able to start travelling again soon. The USA will be quicker but the rest of the world will follow you as always. South Africa is not a country that shares history like the UK does, but it is there if you look for it.
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Just because the the USA is quicker, doesn’t mean we should be. 😉
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I had to go with the slide show today to fully appreciate this most excellent trip. Thanks for letting me come along.
janet
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It is a fascinating place to visit, Janet. The fact that is a working farm makes it really interesting as you can watch people doing various functions around the farm. Michael had an archery lesson which he loved. I saw it is still closed at the moment.
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Pretty wild to think you visited the farm of William Shakespeare’s mother. One of the weird things they do in America is take a tour past celebrities’ homes in Beverly Hills. I know it only includes driving by their homes, but to me, it feels terribly intrusive. I don’t think I’d ever take one of these tours.
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Hi Pete, people have always been fascinated by the famous. Think of the Bronte’s and poor Arthur Bell Nichols, Charlotte’s husband, who lived in the shadow of her memory for the rest of his life. I probably would go on one of those tours. I would be very interested in seeing the houses lf celebrities, it says so much about a person.
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Fabulous photos. Hard to believe how…/short/ people were back in those days! Seriously 😀
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They didn’t get very good food, Meeks. That is one of the big reasons. People are much smaller if they don’t eat much meat.
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Yes, or dairy. I remember looking at a suit of armour in a museum once and thinking it would only fit a pre-pubescent child!
We’d look like giants to them.
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Thanks for the great tour. Yes, as others, I noted the smaller doorways and beds. This farm home looks cozy and well-loved. That’s my feeling, anyway.
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What a treat to visit this farm where Shakespeare’s mother lived. I would love to walk through the dwellings and soak up the atmosphere! Thank you for sharing. I’ll never get over all the short doors. They must have been much smaller people back then. 🙂
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Robbie, this is a marvelous take on a Doors post. Thanks for sharing these photos. I loved seeing the cider press — that was fascinating. Hugs on the wing!
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Hi Teagan, thanks for visiting. I enjoyed that cider press too and the story that went with it. Maybe one day one of my characters will have a cider press.
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Adding that kind of detail adds depth to a story, even if it’s just a passing thing. I put a grist mill in one of the Dead of Winter journeys, and had a reason for a character to explain how it worked. I did that to highlight the “non-technology” aspect of the story. I imagine you would do something very cool with a cider press! Cheers. (Toasting with virtual mug of cider.)
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Nice place. Somebody even bothers to light a fire in the fireplace. Do they still press cider there?
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No, they don’t press cider, but it is still a working farm and you could have lunch there. That is why the fire in the kitchen is lite, because they use it to cook on.
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It looks cozy actually. Thanks for the tour and I can imagine geese herding is fun.
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We didn’t try it. Herding to kids was enough for me.
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Haha. Fair enough!
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Sounds like a really cool place to visit. Thanks for taking us along.
Pat
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Thank you, Pat. It is a lovely place to visit.
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Beautiful place 🤩🤩
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It was, and so interesting too.
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I love history and old buildings, so I thought this post was great. 🙂
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Great post Robbie. You know how much I love to see all these places to visit.
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HI Carla, yes, I think it is even nicer at the moment when none of us can travel much.
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