Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

The Collegiate Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon — Holy Trinity, or simply "Shakespeare's Church" — is a Grade I listed Church of England parish church on the banks of the River Avon in Warwickshire, famous around the world as the place where William Shakespeare was baptised and buried. More than 200,000 tourists visit each year, making it one of England's most visited churches, yet it remains an active parish church serving some 17,000 people, and a member of the Greater Churches Group.

The present building dates from 1210, built on the site of a Saxon monastery, and is Stratford-upon-Avon's oldest building. In the fourteenth century John de Stratford — the local boy who rose to be Archbishop of Canterbury — founded a chantry here, which was rebuilt between 1465 and 1497 by Dean Thomas Balshall, who lies buried in the church. The building is believed originally to have carried a wooden spire, replaced in stone by William Hiorne in 1763. The church's treasures span its whole history: a fourteenth-century sanctuary knocker in the porch of about 1500 — the handle that once granted fugitives thirty-seven days of refuge; the fifteenth-century Clopton chantry chapel; twenty-six fifteenth-century misericord seats in the chancel, carved with religious, secular and mythical subjects; and great stained glass windows of English and Biblical saints at the east and west ends, joined in 1896 by the American window in St Peter's Chapel, inscribed "The Gift of America to Shakespeare's Church". The carved scenes of the life of Christ around Balshall's tomb were mutilated during the Reformation, like most images of Christ — but notable survivors include a remarkable face of Christ, or possibly God the Father, within a sedilia canopy, and beautiful medieval glass depicting the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost. The pre-Reformation stone altar slab, or mensa, was found hidden beneath the floor in Victorian times and has been reinstated as the high altar.

But it is the chancel — built by Thomas Balsall, Dean of the Collegiate Church, who was buried within it in 1491 — that draws the world. William Shakespeare was baptised in Holy Trinity on 26 April 1564 and buried there on 25 April 1616, and the church still possesses the original Elizabethan register recording both events, kept for safekeeping by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Shakespeare came to Holy Trinity every week when he was in town — throughout his childhood, and after his return to live at New Place — and he earned his burial place in the chancel not by fame but by status: as Peter Ackroyd explains, his leasing of tithes from the church made him a "lay rector", entitled to burial within it. The end of his life had its drama even at the church: the day after he signed his will on 25 March 1616 in a "shaky hand", his son-in-law Thomas Quiney was found guilty in the church court of fathering an illegitimate child — who had recently died with the mother, Margaret Wheler, in childbirth — and was ordered to do public penance within the church. Within a month Shakespeare was dead.

Above his grave, a badly eroded slab bears the famous epitaph: "Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, / to digg the dvst encloased heare. / Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones, / and cvrst be he yt moves my bones." The curse has been credited with preventing both the removal of his body to Westminster Abbey and any exhumation for examination. His funerary monument is fixed to the wall alongside, renovated in 1746 with the proceeds of a production of Othello — the first recorded performance of a Shakespeare play in Stratford-upon-Avon. Beside him lies his wife Anne Hathaway, who died on 6 August 1623 aged sixty-seven, her grave carrying a Latin inscription — possibly composed by John Hall on behalf of his wife, Shakespeare's daughter Susanna — that begins, in translation, "Breasts, O mother, milk and life thou didst give," and ends with a prayer that she might rise from the tomb and reach the stars. Susanna herself is buried alongside. In 2006 the Royal Shakespeare Company brought the playwright home, performing Henry VIII in the church as part of the Complete Works Festival.

The church's music matches its stature. The large three-manual pipe organ of 1841 is by William Hill, restored several times by Hill, Norman and Beard and by Nicholson, and now stands in two separate sections: the Great, Swell 1 and Pedal 1 divisions high on the wall above the tower-crossing arch facing west, and the Choir, Swell 2 and Pedal 2 divisions at ground level between St Peter's Chapel and the south aisle. The organ case was designed by George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner. The roll of organists runs from C. J. Read in the 1840s through William Wells Hewitt — who left in 1933 for the Cathedral Church of St James in Toronto — to the long tenures of John Strickson (1954–1979) and Peter Summers (1979–2006), and on to the present.

The church continues to grow gently: in January 2015 planning permission was granted for an extension beside the south aisle providing a new vestry, toilets and storage, designed by Stephen Oliver Architecture and built of local limestone; opened on 17 April 2016, it incorporates a stained-glass window that had been hidden behind the organ. Among the quieter memorials is a sandstone obelisk of 1858 to the printer and botanist William Cheshire. The church is open to visitors for much of the year, with a small contribution requested to enter the chancel and sanctuary where Shakespeare lies — the most visited grave in English literature, in the riverside church where his story began and ended.