As the BBC's Sherlock travels to Victorian London, explore the city in the footsteps of the great detective...
In the Sherlock special on New Year's Day, Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes will be transported back in time to 1895 to solve a Victorian puzzle. Devotees of Arthur Conan Doyle will already be familiar with the London in which he finds himself: a city of fog, hansom cabs, steam trains and frock coats.
Indeed, Sherlock would be nothing without 221B Baker Street, the West End and the crime-ridden streets of London. Begin with a cappuccino or full English at Speedy's Sandwich Bar & Café on 187 North Gower Street – as the BBC's Sherlock does – and then explore the Holmes heartlands, from the West End to Piccadilly Circus...
"We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows." – Dr Watson, A Study in Scarlet
At Christmas 1874, a 14-year-old schoolboy visited London for the first time, staying by turns with relatives at Earl’s Court and Maida Vale. In a whirlwind three weeks, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was taken to London Zoo in Regent’s Park, to the Crystal Palace, the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey. He saw the Shakespearean actor Henry Irving in Hamlet at the Lyceum Theatre—but what must have made the most lasting impression were waxwork effigies at the museum of Madame Tussaud, and especially the Chamber of Horrors.
"We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows." – Dr Watson, A Study in Scarlet
At Christmas 1874, a 14-year-old schoolboy visited London for the first time, staying by turns with relatives at Earl’s Court and Maida Vale. In a whirlwind three weeks, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was taken to London Zoo in Regent’s Park, to the Crystal Palace, the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey. He saw the Shakespearean actor Henry Irving in Hamlet at the Lyceum Theatre—but what must have made the most lasting impression were waxwork effigies at the museum of Madame Tussaud, and especially the Chamber of Horrors.
“I was delighted with the room of Horrors and the images of the murderers,” Arthur wrote to his mother, Mary. Today the waxworks gallery is around the corner on Marylebone Road, but in the 1870s it was on a road that Doyle would go on to immortalise—Baker Street.
Any tour of Sherlock Holmes’s London must begin at the legendary 221B Baker Street, where Holmes lived from 1881 to 1904. At that time there was no such address—nor, of course, would a street door be marked “B” (a discreet brass plate by the bell-pull might have read “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective; John Watson, FRCS”) but we won’t obsess on trifles as Holmes did.
Five lines serve Baker Street Station, among them the Metropolitan, the world’s oldest underground train line, opened in 1863. A Sherlock Holmes silhouette suggests a shadow thrown up on the station’s tiled walls. Emerging onto Baker Street you are met by a statue of the caped detective, courtesy of the Abbey National Building Society. Following the reassignment of street numbers in the 1930s, the Abbey occupied a building on what had been 215–229 Upper Baker Street, and employed a full-time secretary to deal with the correspondence that poured in from around the world, addressed to Sherlock Holmes.
Turn right and cross the road to reach the Sherlock Holmes Museum, marked 221B, which, sitting between 237 and 241, should properly be numbered 239. The upstairs rooms are presented as a Victorian bachelor pad cluttered with Holmes’s possessions—his pipes, his magnifying glass and violin, his books and scientific instruments—while jolly costumed characters are on hand to make you welcome and to answer questions. There is a wealth of period detail—a bathroom with decorative ceramic basin and lavatory, Dr Watson’s room with thumbed and dog-eared textbooks, and, amid the fireside chairs and trappings of a bachelor life, Mrs Hudson’s more feminine room with a pretty fireplace.
North of Baker Street is Regent’s Park, and the London Zoo, where the schoolboy Arthur Doyle “saw the animals being fed and the seals kissing their keeper”—but we are going the other way.
Baker Street itself is choked with traffic, being on 13 different daytime bus routes—but this is London. Heading south, take a left onto Wigmore Street, as Holmes and Watson did on their way to the Alpha Tavern in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. You cross Welbeck Street, where, in The Final Problem, Holmes had to jump for his life to avoid being mown down by a two-horse van.
(South of this is Vere Street, where a brick lobbed from a rooftop shattered at his feet.) You are passing through the “doctor’s quarters” of Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and Cavendish Square, where, as Dr Percy Trevelyan complained in The Adventure of the Resident Patient , a specialist would need substantial capital to pay enormous rents and furnishing expenses, besides hiring a presentable horse and carriage. It is the same today—but for the horse and carriage.
A left at Langham Place, leading to Portland Place, brings us to the Langham Hotel (No. 1C). Built in 1863–5 and opened by the Prince of Wales, the Langham was the largest and most up-to-date hotel in London, with 600 rooms, 300 lavatories, 36 bathrooms, and the first hydraulic lift in Britain. It was, then, the natural choice for the King of Bohemia, who stayed there under the alias Count Von Kramm in A Scandal in Bohemia.
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