In the 18th century, excessive admiration of William Shakespeare’s life and work, coined ‘bardolatry’, was rife and an informal tourist industry in Stratford-on-Avon boomed.
The growing number of visitors to Shakespeare’s home New Place famously annoyed the house’s owner, Rev Francis Gastrell. In the 1750s, he felled a mulberry tree planted by the Bard and later demolished the house.