221B Baker Street
Encyclopedia : 2 : 22 : 221 : 221B Baker Street
- For other uses, see 221B Baker Street (disambiguation)}}}.
The site of the house — had it ever existed (see below) — would have been at the north end of Baker Street near Regent's Park and Baker Street tube station.
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.
(Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887)
The 'real' 221B Baker Street
The street number 221B has never been assigned to any property in Baker Street. In Sherlock Holmes's time, street numbers in Baker Street only went up to No 100, which was presumably why Conan Doyle chose the fictional number.The part now encompassing 221 Baker Street was known in Doyle's lifetime as Upper Baker Street, and in the first manuscript, Doyle put Holmes's home in "Upper Baker Street", indicating that if he had a house in mind it would have been in the section north of Marylebone Road, near Regent's Park. When street numbers were re-allocated in the 1930s, a block of eight numbers including 221 was assigned to an Art Deco building known as Abbey House, constructed in 1932 for the Abbey Road Building Society (subsequently the Abbey National), which the company occupied until 2002.
Almost immediately, the building society started receiving correspondence to Sherlock Holmes from all over the world, in such volumes that it appointed a permanent "secretary to Sherlock Holmes" to deal with it. In 1999, Abbey National sponsored the creation of a bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes that now stands at the entrance to Baker Street tube station.
Holmes scholars have had a number of theories as to the "real" address: the most likely place it in the 40-60 region on the even-numbered side of Baker Street. With much of Baker Street devastated during the blitz, little trace is left of the original buildings, and most of them are post-war, except those in what was known as Upper Baker Street.
The Sherlock Holmes Museum
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is housed in an 1815 house similar to the fictional 221B. Opened in 1990, it displays exhibits in period rooms, wax figures and Holmes memorabilia. Both Abbey House and the Sherlock Holmes Museum declared themselves to be the "real" 221B: the outcome of a dispute between the two in 1994, when the museum applied unsuccessfully for permission to renumber itself 221. Both have a claim: Abbey House is where 221B "could have been" and the museum is where Sherlock Holmes's post is delivered.
After the closure of Abbey House, the museum took on the duties of answering all of Holmes's post and reports that it still receives letters – up to 50 a week – inquiring after Holmes or his services. The US News & World Report of 19 January 1987 quoted one reply as saying: "Mr Holmes thanks you for your letter. At the moment he is in retirement in Sussex, keeping bees." This is an allusion to Dr Joseph Bell, upon whom Holmes was based: after working on the Jack the Ripper case, Bell retired to the English countryside and kept bees. In The Adventure of the Second Stain from the Return of Sherlock Holmes series, Watson tells readers that "Holmes has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs."
The Sherlock Holmes pub
Another version of Sherlock Holmes's apartment is at the Sherlock Holmes pub in Northumberland Avenue near Charing Cross railway station. This was originally a small hotel, the Northumberland Arms, but was refurbished and reopened under its present name in December 1957. Its owners, Whitbread & Co, were fortunate to own the entire Sherlock Holmes exhibit put together by Marylebone Borough Library and the Abbey National for the 1951 Festival of Britain. The pub was restored to a late Victorian form and the exhibit, a detailed replica of Holmes's fictional apartment, was installed on the upstairs floor.
See also
External links
- [The Sherlock Holmes Society of London]
- [The Baker Street Journal] an Irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana
- [The Sherlock Holmes Museum] - the Official Home of Sherlock Holmes.
- [Abbey and Sherlock Holmes]
- [Sherlock Holmes Books] - in easy to read HTML format.
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