Mary Arden's Farm Mary Arden's Farm Mary Arden's Farm, also known as Mary Arden's House, is the farmhouse of Mary Shakespeare (née Arden), the mother of Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare. Because of confusion about the actual house inhabited by Mary in the mid-sixteenth century, the term may refer either of two houses. Both are grade I listed and located in the village of Wilmcote, about three miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. A house wrongly identified as Mary Arden's (it actually belonged to a neighbour) was bought by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 1930 and refurnished in the Tudor style.This timber framed house has been maintained
Cecil Arden Cecil Arden Cecil Arden (December 15, 1894 – September 4, 1989) was an American mezzo-soprano and contralto opera singer active over the early decades of the twentieth century. Cecile Alexia Hart was born in New York City to Benjamin and Mildred Hart. Her father was real estate broker originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and her mother a native of Springfield, Illinois. Little is known of Arden's early life other than that she studied under the Italian Arturo Buzzi-Peccia and that there are photographs of her singing at a patriotic event on the steps of New York’s Federal Hall National Memorial