Tired of tourists asking to see Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, the Revd Francis Gastrell is believed to have felled it in 1756; wood said to be from it veneers a table that sold for £10,000 at Toovey’s in West Sussex.

A Regency centre table whose top carries 52 oyster-veneered panels of mulberry wood, purportedly from the tree that grew in William Shakespeare‘s garden at Stratford-upon-Avon, sold for a hammer price of £10,000 at Toovey’s in West Sussex on 5 November 2026, according to the auctioneer’s entry for lot 2001.

Toovey’s catalogues the lot as “An important Regency pollard oak and mulberry oyster-veneered circular tip-top centre table of historical literary interest”. It stands 74cm high and measures 135cm in diameter, on a flared triform pedestal with downswept scrolling feet, and the catalogue records minor faults. A period brass plaque is applied to the crossbanded border of the top.

The catalogue describes the top as having 52 oyster-veneered panels of mulberry wood, “purportedly from the mulberry tree that grew in William Shakespeare’s garden in Stratford-upon-Avon, each piece representing a year of the Bard’s life”. The plaque makes the same count in its own words, saying the 52 pieces of mulberry were laid in local oak “having reference to the poet’s age at his decease”.

A mulberry at New Place

Toovey’s says the tree is thought to have been planted around 1609 at New Place, Shakespeare’s final home, at a period when King James was encouraging mulberry planting for a silk industry.

The best-known account of how the tree came down is the one the auctioneer gives, and it carries a qualifier. “The tree is believed to have been cut down in 1756, when the current owner of New Place, the Reverend Francis Gastrell, grew tired of tourists constantly visiting and asking to see the tree,” the catalogue note says.

According to the same note, a local carpenter, Thomas Sharp, bought much of the felled tree, and many carved mementoes were made from it. After Sharp’s death the remaining stock was purchased by John Marshall. Whole logs were also made available to selected cabinet makers.

Toovey’s keeps the word “purportedly” at the point where it states where the panels came from, and does not assert that the wood has been proved to be from Shakespeare’s tree. The qualifier carries weight, since the catalogue’s own account of Sharp and Marshall describes mementoes of the Stratford mulberry being produced in quantity.

What the brass plaque says

The applied brass plaque is the fullest account the table gives of itself, and Toovey’s transcribes it in the catalogue. It reads: “This table known in the family as ‘Shakespeare’s’ table is formed of 52 pieces of Mulberry wood laid in local Oak having reference to the poet’s age at his decease. The Mulberry tree was well known at Stratford as Shakespeare’s Mulberry tree and grew in the gardens of a Mrs Besant or Bessant who occupied the larger house in which Shakespeare and his family lived. Whether the tree fell or was cut down is uncertain but of the wood two tables were made, one in the possession of Wm Hunt Esqr of Stratford and the other this belonging to the Revd Thos Higgins, to whose first wife it was bequeathed by her father, J. Mills Esqr of Billesley Hall, Stratford on Avon Co. Warwick by whom it was won in a raffle of 100 guineas.”

Two points in that text sit beside, rather than with, the catalogue note. The plaque does not name Gastrell, and it does not settle how the tree came down: “Whether the tree fell or was cut down is uncertain.” It also places the tree in the garden of “a Mrs Besant or Bessant who occupied the larger house in which Shakespeare and his family lived”, rather than simply in Shakespeare’s own garden.

The plaque is more specific about how the table reached the family that has now sold it. J. Mills of Billesley Hall, near Stratford-upon-Avon, won it in a raffle of 100 guineas, and it passed by bequest to his daughter, the first wife of the Reverend Thomas Higgins. Toovey’s gives the provenance of the lot as the Reverend Thomas Higgins and thence by descent to the current owner.

The second table, and the result

The plaque records that two tables were made from the wood. The other, described as in the possession of “Wm Hunt Esqr of Stratford”, is almost certainly the table now in the collection of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Toovey’s says, with provenance confirming that it was made for the Hunt family.

On the auctioneer’s account, then, the table sold in November has a companion that can be traced to an institutional collection, while its own history rests on what the plaque sets out, claim by claim, and on a line of descent from the Reverend Thomas Higgins. Neither strand amounts to proof about the timber: the origin of the wood is stated as purported rather than established, and the identification of the second table is put no more strongly than “almost certainly”.

The sale was held at Toovey’s salerooms at Spring Gardens, Washington, in West Sussex, where lot 2001 reached a hammer price of £10,000 on 5 November.

Rupert Toovey set out the lot’s history and the plaque text in the Sussex Express on 9 November, repeating the “purportedly” qualifier, the 1756 account and the £10,000 result. The firm’s head of furniture, William Rowsell, is also named in that article.