A chip off the old block!

From Henry Irving to Errol Flynn a host of well-known actors trod the boards in honour of the bard at Northampton Rep – now Royal and Derngate.

But the theatre may have an even closer connection with Shakespeare via a souvenir on the wall that may have come from the great playwright’s garden. Or so the story goes.

Pay a visit to Royal & Derngate today and you will find on the wall of what used to be called the crush room, a glass case containing a humble-looking walking stick.

The stick was made from wood from a mulberry tree – and it may have come from a bush planted in Shakespeare’s garden in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Although this plant was cut down in 1756, the wood was turned into souvenirs, and snapped up by fans of the dramatist.

There is a slim chance that the famous 18th Century actor David Garrick may have come across a cutting when he was organising celebrations for the playwright, more than 150 years after his death.

For when Garrick visited his theatre-loving friend Anne Hanbury, wife of John Harvey Thursby, at Abington Park in 1764, he brought her a sapling from a mulberry tree and this was duly planted on the estate.

Over 100 years later the Mayor of Northampton, Henry Martin (whose firm had built the theatre in Northampton) met the actor Henry Irving during a visit to the Lyceum Theatre, in London in 1893.

He decided that he wanted to give the great Victorian actor a present and had a walking stick made from a branch of the tree in Abington Park.

This walking stick was presented to Sir Henry Irving in 1903 when he visited the theatre for three days and performed in The Merchant of Venice. He added it to his collection of items that he had related to David Garrick.

In 1957 the walking stick was presented to Northampton Repertory Company by Laurence Irving, the great actor’s grandson, to mark 30 years of the Repertory company.

It is now on display in the foyer of The Royal Theatre.