Some eight miles south–west of Compton Wynyates, retired from the Oxford Road, stands the interesting, picturesque, and considerable manor–house of Little Wolford. With its ancient courtyard, shaded by yews and gay in summer with hollyhocks and other old–time flowers, it is still a fine specimen of a half–timbered stone mansion of the early part of the sixteenth century. Formerly belonging to the Ingraham family, the place has fallen into decay, and from its old estate as a considerable and picturesque mansion. The Hall, which possesses an open timbered roof, has a good Tudor fireplace, and on the walls are hung old portraits of former owners, and relics in the shape of saddlery and arms, said to have been used during the Civil War. At the back of the house is a chamber with a large oven, in which, tradition asserts, rightly or wrongly, Charles II. hid when a fugitive after Worcester fight. CHAPTER XI SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE AND SHAKESPEARE’S TOWN The history of Stratford–on–Avon, which takes its name from the Saxon stroete or street, in allusion to the highway on the great north road leading from London to Birmingham and Holyhead, and the _ford_, from the passage of the Avon, which in ancient times ran parallel with the bridge of fourteen arches erected by Sir Hugh Clopton at his own expense in the reign of Henry VII. The existence of the town can be traced to a date some three centuries prior to the Norman Conquest, but historical details of its early days are scant, although there was in the seventh century a Saxon monastery possessed by Æthelard, one of the subordinate kings of the Wiccians. This foundation was, however, in all probability, dissolved a couple of centuries later. Although doubtless the Celtic invader, the proud legions of Rome, and the Saxon settlers who succeeded the latter, all visited Stratford, which from time immemorial must have been a “sweet and pleasant place of good pasturage and watering,” there exist no records of those long–past days, when the great Forest of Arden covered with an almost impenetrable boscage the whole country which lay between the Avon to the south and Watling Street to the north, to whose depths and fastnesses the original inhabitants retreated in front of the invaders who, afflicting Britain, found their all–conquering way at times even into the heart of England itself. In the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford are many survivals of Celtic origin in the nomenclature, and there are some authorities who seek to trace some measure of Shakespeare’s poetic genius to a remote and long–forgotten Celtic ancestry.