Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon

Listen first. Somewhere close by, the River Avon is moving slowly past the churchyard wall. Above you, leaves shift in the long avenue of lime trees that leads to the north porch. Underfoot, the path is worn smooth by centuries of shoes. This is the quietest corner of Stratford-upon-Avon. It is also where the town's most famous son began and ended his life.

You are standing at the Church of the Holy Trinity, the oldest building in Stratford. William Shakespeare was baptised here in April 1564. He was buried here in April 1616. Between those two dates lies one of the great careers in the history of literature. Yet this place was a working parish church long before him. It is still one today. People come here for weddings, funerals and Sunday services, as well as for the poet.

The church stands on very old ground. A religious community is thought to have existed on this site before the Norman Conquest. The building you see grew slowly, mostly from the early thirteenth century onward. Each generation added something. A tower here, a wider aisle there, new windows when fashions changed. So when you walk around the outside, you are reading several centuries of building at once. The stone is a warm, pale sandstone, softened and darkened by weather.

Look up at the spire. It looks perfectly at home on the medieval tower, but it is much younger than the church below it. The stone spire was added in the eighteenth century, replacing an earlier timber one. Here is the first surprise for many visitors. Some of the most familiar parts of an old building are often later additions. The church is not a single moment frozen in time. It is a long conversation between builders who never met each other.

Now walk to the north porch and look closely at the door. You may see a heavy old knocker. It is traditionally called a sanctuary knocker. In medieval England, a person fleeing the law could claim protection within certain churches for a limited time. Whether this knocker was ever used in that way is hard to prove. But it is a small, physical link to a world where a church door could mean the difference between punishment and safety.

In the fourteenth century, the church became a collegiate church. That means a small college of priests served here, saying prayers and masses, rather than a single parish priest. A local man who rose high in the Church, John de Stratford, played a key role in this. That status helps explain the scale of the place. For a market town, the church is long, generous and confident. It was built to impress, and to pray in, at the same time.

Inside, let your eyes adjust. Light falls through tall windows onto the nave, the long main body of the church where the congregation sits. Look along it toward the east. You may notice that the chancel, the area around the altar at the far end, does not line up perfectly with the nave. It bends slightly. Some people explain this as a symbol of Christ's head leaning on the cross. That is a pious tradition, not a proven fact. Uneven building phases are another likely reason.

The chancel itself was rebuilt in the late fifteenth century, in the tall, light style called Perpendicular Gothic. That is the last phase of English medieval architecture, with strong vertical lines and very large windows. Before you reach the altar, look down at the wooden choir stalls. Under the seats are carved ledges called misericords. They gave tired clergy something to lean on during long services. The carvings show strange, funny and earthy scenes, and they are easy to miss.

And now, the reason most people come. Shakespeare's grave lies in the chancel floor, near the altar. It is a plain stone slab. It carries no name. Instead, it carries a short verse. It asks good friends, for Jesus's sake, not to dig the dust enclosed there. It blesses the man who spares the stones, and curses the one who moves the bones. Many believe Shakespeare wrote it himself. Nobody can say for certain.

That curse has worked, in a way. The grave has never been formally opened. But there is a second surprise here. In 2016, archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar, a way of looking under the floor without digging. Their results suggested the grave is shallow, and that the area at the head end had been disturbed. This fits an old local story that the poet's skull was stolen long ago. The evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. The mystery remains open.

Beside him lie members of his family. His wife, Anne Hathaway, is buried close by. So is his daughter Susanna and her husband, the physician John Hall. On the north wall of the chancel, above the graves, is Shakespeare's funerary monument. It shows a painted bust of the poet, pen in hand, made within a few years of his death. Because his family and friends could have seen it, it is one of only two portraits with a strong claim to show what he really looked like.

Before you leave, find the font and the parish register displays, if they are on show. Shakespeare's baptism and burial were recorded in the church's register, in plain handwriting, among ordinary townsfolk. That is perhaps the quietest surprise of all. In the records of his own time, he was simply one more Stratford name. The fame came later. Here, he was a local child, a local husband, a local father.

When you step back outside, walk slowly down to the river side of the churchyard. Look at the water, the willows, the swans, the long line of the church against the sky. This view would have been familiar to the man buried inside. Then turn back toward the lime trees and the town. Listen again for the river. It was here before the church, and it is still here now.