Shakespeare's Birthplace is a timber-framed house on Henley Street where the poet was born in April 1564 and grew up before his move to London. The house is now the centrepiece of a visitor operation run by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which administers all five of the main Shakespeare properties in and around the town. It is the most visited building in Stratford, and in summer the queue can be significant; the audio guides and interpretive material are reasonably good.
The building has been altered and restored over the centuries, so its current appearance represents a reasonable approximation of a sixteenth-century merchant's house rather than a preserved original. The interior has been furnished to suggest the period, with particular attention to John Shakespeare's glove-making workshop on the ground floor — Shakespeare's father was a glover and this is where the family income originated. The upstairs rooms include the chamber where Shakespeare is believed to have been born.
The garden at the rear is planted with flowers and herbs mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, a charming conceit that is better maintained than it might be. The visitor centre attached to the house has the usual gift shop but also some genuinely interesting material on early modern theatrical life and the circumstances of Shakespeare's biography.