The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre — Now The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
A History
The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, completed in 1879, came about as a result of the boom in the brewing industry in Stratford, and only then because the town had been built, back in the 12th century, alongside a clear, fast flowing river, which was, by the late 18th century, an integral part of the new canal system that transported consumer goods, and raw materials, from the newly industrialised North and Midlands south to the river Avon where larger vessels would then ferry them south westward to Bristol and the rest of the world. But it wasn’t until the 1830s, after the abolition of the tax on brewing, that a young man came to Stratford intent on making his fortune, and his name.
Edward Fordham Flower, the founder of Flowers Brewery, was a very cultured man who, as a young child in the early 19th century emigrated with his parents from Hertfordshire, in the south east of England, to a plot of farm land in the south west of Illinois. By 1827 the teenage Edward had had enough of the ‘American dream’ (in fact he was in fear of his life from pro-slavers)and, leaving his family behind, headed back to England — via New York where he observed the brewing industry — and settled in the prosperous little market town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where he married a local girl and set about making his fortune.
