plaque · Birmingham

William Shakespeare

The Shakespeare William Shakespeare was born twenty miles from Birmingham in Stratford-upon-Avon. Despite developing his career in London, Shakespeare's family remained in Stratford and he made frequent retreats to his home town. The Shakespeare stands close to the centre of Birmingham's famous Jewellery Quarter where in 1773 Parliament granted the Hallmarking Act and the Birmingham Assay Office was created. The success of the Assay Office was due to it's pioneering use of steam-powered presses for hallmarking. Today it is the largest in the world and is responsible for hallmarking over 12 million items a year.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

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