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Welcome to Stratford on Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare. It's good to remind ourselves that it was not just adaptations of Shakespeare plays that concerned the young film

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industry, but non-fiction films, too. This 1921 film is a travelogue in form, very like one of the guidebooks to Shakespeare Land that you could use on a visit.

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The title here situates us on the beautiful Warwickshire Avon, and also tells us the film was issued by the Hepworth company, a well established film producer from the early days of film in Britain.

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Now, Cecil Hepworth, the company's owner, didn't shoot this film himself. It was one of a series made by a cameraman that Hepworth dubbed that clever Frenchman, Gaston Quiribet.

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He was born in 1888 and came over to England around 1908, and worked with Hepworth until the outbreak of the Great War. After distinguishing himself in France, he returned to this country and made this series of travelogues

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in the 1920s, which they named stereo scenics. The films were not 3D as we know it, but intended to evoke the stereo cards that were very popular from the end of the 19th century.

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These often depicted famous beauty spots and tourist destinations. Photographed twice from slightly different angles, they gave a 3D effect when seen through a special viewing

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device. These film versions gave a sense of depth through gentle movement. Quiribet's method was to mount his camera

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on a moving boat, as here, or a car as we'll see later. And it was the curving trajectory that gave an extra dimensionality that proved very popular.

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Here, we get a great sense of arrival as we turn the corner and see Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare was baptised and is buried. A high angle shot gives us a sense of overview,

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like a map in a guidebook as we focus in on the important sites of the old town from where we can as it were zoom in to see the particular streets and buildings of relevance to Shakespeare's life.

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John Shakespeare's house in Henley Street is almost certainly where his eldest son, William was born. This restored 16th Century building is the first port of call on any tour.

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It was passed from generation to generation of the family until mid-19th Century when it was purchased for the nation in a campaign set up by none other than Charles Dickens.

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The house today recreates the rooms, the furnishings and the gardens, just as they would have been in Shakespeare's day. Young William was lucky to be educated here.

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His father, a glovemaker and a businessman, was riding high at this time. He'd been elected to the town council, reaching the position of High Bailiff.

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So his son would have been eligible for a free place from the age of 7 to 14, where he learned the classics that formed such an inspiration for his plays and techniques like rhetoric that would develop his language skills.

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At the end of the street, you can see the Tower of the Guild Chapel of the Holy Cross, where his father had been obliged to cover up the 15th Century wall paintings, depicting apocalyptic scenes and a Danse Macabre.

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He was paid two shillings to limewash them out as signs of idolatry and superstition under an injunction in the early reign of Elizabeth I. This shot is a classic Gaston Quiribet travelling shot, taken very slowly and smoothly from

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a moving car. Now, not everyone was reconciled with Stratford being overrun with tourists. The Reverend Francis Gastrell, who

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owned New Place after it was rebuilt in 1702, was plagued by visitors. He apparently felled the famous mulberry tree in 1756, causing much outrage.

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He then compounded this by selling the wood, which was carved into objects, many of which still survive as souvenirs or relics. Anne Hathaway's cottage is actually

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nearly a mile away from central Stratford in the hamlet of Shottery. This quintessential thatched Tudor cottage is actually a great big farmhouse of 12 rooms.

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It was extended in Shakespeare's time and was occupied by the same family for 13 generations. There were a lot of pubs and hostelries in Stratford. You can just see a temperance hotel

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behind this fountain offering an alternative. Visitors to Stratford would have been grateful for this free drink to an American Shakespeare enthusiast, an exemplary, self-made Baltimore newspaper

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publisher and philanthropist with a taste for English literature. The fountain was also built to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887, when she'd been on the throne

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for 50 years. Our cameraman is now back on the river in another lovely slow moving scene, taken with the camera mounted on a boat.

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The theatre commissioned for the 1864 tercentenary opened in 1869 and had an interesting connection with the film industry. In June 1921, not long after this film was released,

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members of the Cinematograph Exhibitors Association organised a day trip to Stratford, where the trustees of the Memorial Theatre had agreed to instal a cinema outfit to show films

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at times when there were no seasons of Shakespeare plays. One can only hope that the nitrate film didn't contribute to the burning down of the theatre in 1926. The Tudor house was restored to its original condition

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in 1903, following a campaign by Marie Corelli, a resident of Stratford and famous novelist of the time. You'll notice at the bottom a sign saying Shakespearean Souvenir Depot, selling

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whatever the 1921 equivalent of the Shakespeare fridge magnet was. Stratford, as a site of pilgrimage, went all the way back to 1634, but expanded massively after

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David Garrick, the 18th Century actor, set up the Shakespeare Festival in 1769. This gabled building originated in the 14th century and was likewise restored, revealing its Tudor beams from under 18th

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century stucco. Another American connection, as the title tells us, Katharine Rogers, mother of John Harvard, founder of the great Harvard University, was born here.

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The house was rebuilt in 1596 following a great fire that destroyed much of the Centre of Stratford. It was built by Thomas Rogers, a contemporary of Shakespeare's father.

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Holy Trinity Church with the great spire we saw from the River Avon was very old even when Shakespeare was born. On the site of an Anglo-Saxon monastery,

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the building is 13th and 15th Century, and the final resting place of Shakespeare, just a stone's throw from where he was born 52 years previously. A short life, but with what a legacy.

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At this point, the filmmaker decides to throw in a reminder of that legacy by introducing some ghostly characters from the plays. This is done by a simple superimposition,

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getting some performers in costume to act out scenes first from the merchant of Venice, and then a pair of lovers. Rosalind and Orlando, perhaps. Maybe Romeo and Juliet.

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By winding back the camera and refilming the scene without the actors, you can create this kind of spectral effect. This visualisation of characters within nonfiction films was

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quite common in the 1920s. So inside Holy Trinity itself, we see the Shakespeare funerary monument with its famous curse in doggerel.

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The monument is perhaps the most contemporary representation of his features that we have. The curse was probably intended to deter souvenir hunters. And finally, more aesthetic iconography.

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In today's selfie spot, we come to Lord Ronald Gower's great Victorian monument to the Bard, unveiled in 1888, with the great man in bronze, seated with quill and parchment in hand, and flanked by characters from his plays.

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Prince Hal representing history, Hamlet, philosophy, Lady Macbeth, tragedy, and Falstaff for comedy. And the film ends with Horatio's famous words to Hamlet as a farewell to Shakespeare, Stratford

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and to us.