Wilmcote is a village a few kilometres North of Stratford-upon-Avon. The village is best known for being the birthplace of Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother and the location of her farm. Wilmcote was listed in the Domesday Book as Wilmecote and was later a hamlet of the nearby Aston Cantlow.
Wilmcote remained a small agricultural settlement until the eighteenth century when limestone quarries resulted in the then-new Stratford-upon-Avon Canal being routed through Wilmcote. The village gained a railway station in 1860. The quarries are no longer in use and nowadays the village is mostly residential though it also attracts tourists who come to see Mary Arden's Farm.
An interesting find in the Wilmcote stone quarry was a fossil of a young Ichthyosaur. This is now on display in the Warwick Market Hall Museum.
