What is now presented as Mary Arden's Farm, the childhood home of Shakespeare's mother, is actually an amalgam of the house in which Mary was indeed brought up - Mary Arden's House - and the neighbouring farm of the Palmer family.
The farm, located in Wilmcote, about three miles outside Stratford-upon-Avon, would by the standards of the 1570s have been an affluent one. Its own cider mill and stone dovecote were all part of the huge enterprise needed to sustain the farm's workers.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust had for many years preserved as Mary Arden's House the farmhouse discovered, in 2000, to have in fact belonged to Adam Palmer, and now known as Palmer's Farm (below).
The Trust had however bought, back in 1968, the adjoining property, then known as Glebe Farm, to prevent redevelopment next to what had been thought of Mary Arden's House. Glebe Farm is now correctly identified as the Ardens' house.
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