The house where the Mountjoys lived is long gone, but its location can be gauged quite exactly...

That the house does not survive is unremarkable. Because of the Fire, the centre of London is almost devoid of Elizabethan and Jacobean houses. But we are still further from the physical reality of the house because Silver Street no longer exists. It disappeared in the second great cataclysm to hit the area — the London Blitz... Many streets rose again from the ashes of the Blitz but Silver Street did not. It was dealt a final death-blow by redevelopment and traffic-planning — we are at the outer edge of the giant Barbican estate, opened in the early 1960s. All that survives visibly of the previous layout are the old churchyards, which have been left as public open spaces...

The churchyard of St Olave's stood almost directly opposite the edge of the busy road called London Wall (part of the A1211). The name London Wall is misleading at this point, where the road runs south of, and at an angle to, the true line of the old walls, whose fragmentary bastions can be seen to the north. The line of Silver Street lies partly under and partly alongside this road. Pacing it out I would say that the closest one can now get to the Mountjoys' house is underneath the road, in London Wall carpark. We are physically near, for the pre-Fire stratum is indeed some feet below the current surface, but this is on the whole a depressing proximity. An underground carpark is unmistakeably an underground carpark whether or not Shakespeare once lived on the site of it.

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist