Summer re-read, HOUND

While I usually like to re-read HOUN once the weather cools down a bit, for atmospheric reasons,
I am starting re-read it now at the height of summer for good reason.

The Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock Mo. is doing a stage presentation Aug. 5th - 13th.
It is a relatively small theatre as theatres in this area goes (450 seats).

Arrow Rock is a small historical town here along the Missouri River with artistic connections that go way back.

This will be my daughters first Sherlock Holmes play and we are going to make a weekend of it in Arrow Rock.

Have you ever heard of this one. . . . The Baskerville Arms Hotel

Close to the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons and Offa's Dyke path and within a short walking distance of the River Wye, dishes are prepared from fresh local produce.

Here you will find a homely 'locals bar' atmosphere.

 The Baskerville Arms

Val Andrews books at Amazon

Through personal connections, when we visited England in the early 1990's we got to visit with writer Val Andrews and spent some pleasent time with him in London.
Many of his books are available at Amazon Kindle books. Often connecting his other love, magic, to the world of Sherlock Holmes, they are fun books to explore.

Val Andrews at Amazon.

With the tourist season fast approaching. . . . .

Walk the streets of London like Sherlock

By JOHN LEE

Special Contributor

Published: 21 March 2016 02:23 PM

Updated: 21 March 2016 02:23 PM

LONDON — It’s noon on the dank, misty streets of old London, and I’m sitting outside a cafe, perusing passersby from behind my newspaper. Most are innocently conducting their business, but at least three look suspicious. I only wish I had a pipe, deerstalker and oversize magnifying glass to aid my investigation.

I’m not a qualified detective, but when Sherlock Holmes is on your mind, you can’t help viewing the world as a series of clues. And London — the home of Holmes and many of the murderous scenes he deciphers — is jampacked with evidence of the masterful crime-solver.

Which brings me back to the cafe. The hottest recent adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories is the modern-day BBC TV show Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. Fan of the show? You’ll know the pair haunts Speedy’s, the small cafe beside their 221B Baker Street flat.

But it doesn’t take a detective to realize all is not as it seems here. London has a real-life Baker Street, but Speedy’s and Sherlock’s front door are filmed a mile away on North Gower Street. Luckily my razor-sharp sleuthing skills unmasked these secret filming locations. (I Googled them.)

The cafe’s busy tables host two well-defined groups: lunch-grabbing office workers and Sherlock nuts snapping surreptitious selfies. I pretend I’m a local but my cover is blown when I order the chicken and bacon Sherlock Wrap, something only a fan would do.

Munching on lunch at my al fresco table, I plot the rest of my Sherlockian day with forensic precision. Fusing old and new, there’s plenty to see.

Walking tour

Hopping the Tube to Embankment Station, I start with an In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes walking tour. Led by a twinkle-eyed guide named Corinna who would be a perfect Mrs. Hudson, it snakes through back alleys, covering sites from the stories. Our group — including Japanese, Polish and New Jersey fans — learns that while Holmes lives on Baker Street, the stories are mostly set in the West End.

We stop at a handsome edifice that was once Charing Cross Hospital, ogle the grand facade of Simpsons-in-the-Strand restaurant, and linger in cobbled Covent Garden, a setting from “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” We also inspect Goodwin’s Court, where bow windows and gas lamps bring the Victorian era to life.

Intriguing Conan Doyle facts are provided en route. Born in Scotland, the author knew little of London when he arrived, and he originally named his main character Sherrinford Holmes. He sold his first tale, “A Study in Scarlet,” for just 25 pounds.

As the tour concludes, I ask Corinna why she thinks Holmes endures. “We all love a good mystery, don’t we? And I think people really enjoy searching for the clues in the stories,” she says, recommending “The Sign of Four” for first-time readers.

The tour ends outside Northumberland Street’s handsome, recently refurbished Sherlock Holmes Pub. But I postpone my end-of-day libation and instead plot two extra stops via the Tube.

The game’s afoot

Alighting at Baker Street, near my hotel (the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes, of course), I find an Underground station where the wall tiles are patterned with an instantly recognizable pipe-wielding profile. There’s also a towering Sherlock statue outside encircled by giddy snappers. Many are on their way to the real 221B Baker Street.

Colonizing a slender heritage townhouse, it’s home to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, London’s most popular Holmesian attraction. The $21.50 admission fee and summertime queues are a deterrent to some, but re-created period rooms are an evocative immersion in Conan Doyle’s world.

I’m soon ascending the house’s staircase and find a clutch of Victorian rooms lined with antiques and oddball artifacts — including voodoo dolls and a revolver in a hollowed book. Reaching the top floor, though, I suddenly face a cold-eyed waxwork of Sherlock’s archenemy Moriarty.

Tempted to pitch the evil baddie through a window, I instead wrestle with my anger and head back downstairs to the busy gift shop. Resisting the lure of Watson teapots, deerstalker hats and head-scratching puzzle books designed to hone deduction skills, I instead hit the streets for my penultimate pit stop.

Since Season 2 of the BBC show, an older building at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital has become an unlikely pilgrimage destination. In the cleverly titled “The Reichenbach Fall” episode, Cumberbatch’s Sherlock seems to leap to his death from the building’s roof — and worshippers have been flocking here ever since.

But they’re not just snapping photos. The area’s old red telephone box and adjoining walls are covered with messages supporting their hero. “Sherlock lives” is ubiquitous, but there’s also “Sherlock forever,” “Moriarty is real” and the enigmatic “I’m glad you liked my potato.” Inside the booth, an empty wineglass has also been carefully placed.

It’s a reminder to return to Northumberland Street for a final toast. The Sherlock Holmes Pub serves Sherlock House Ale and Watson’s Traditional Sunday Roast, but its walls are also lined with memorabilia and photos of celluloid Sherlocks. There’s even an artifact cabinet with a model of “the remarkable worm” for true devotees.

Heading upstairs, I discover a museumlike room behind glass. Re-creating the great detective’s study, there are countless books, a violin and some Black Shag Tobacco. And in the center — looking cadaverously pale — I find Sherlock himself. He may be a mannequin, but he looks like he could still out-sleuth me anytime.

John Lee is a U.K.-born writer based in Vancouver.

If you go

Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel (parkplazasherlockholmes.com), 108 Baker St. near Baker Street Underground Station.

Speedy’s Sandwich Bar & Cafe (speedyscafe.co.uk), 187 North Gower St. near Euston Square Underground Station. Visit sherlockology.com for additional BBC show locations.

In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes tours (walks.com) start at 2 p.m. every Friday and cost $14.

Sherlock Holmes Museum (sherlock-holmes.co.uk), 221B Baker St., near Baker Street Underground Station.

St. Bartholomew’s Hospital is on West Smithfield, a short walk from St. Paul’s Underground Station.

Sherlock Holmes Pub (sherlockholmes-stjames.co.uk), 10 Northumberland St., near Charing Cross Underground Station.

Source and credit

A fun interesting read from a few years ago.

Dartmoor: In the footprints of a gigantic hound

Conan Doyle's canine monstrosity is 100 years old. A nervous Christopher Somerville plays literary sleuth on Dartmoor

12:01AM GMT 09 Mar 2002

WHENEVER fans of Sherlock Holmes hear the name of Dartmoor, it is impressions from The Hound Of The Baskervilles that come rushing to mind: a barren, mist-wreathed moor, a mysterious figure silhouetted against the rising moon, the face of an escaped convict "all seamed and scored with vile passions", and the blood-freezing howl of the fiery, fiendish Hound from the heart of the great Grimpen Mire.

Something about the moor fascinated Arthur Conan Doyle from the moment his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson spun him a yarn about a spectral hound that haunted Dartmoor. Researching his tale in 1901, Conan Doyle drew inspiration from the gloomy baronial halls, sucking bogs, abandoned tin mines and lonely houses all around - not to mention the great grim prison.

Doyle had killed off his famous detective eight years before. But Holmes simply could not be left out of such a ripping yarn. It was a wise capitulation on Conan Doyle's part: The Hound Of The Baskervilles has never been out of print, and rarely off the film and TV screen, since its first serialised publication in 1901-2 in The Strand Magazine. We love this Gothic horror tale, all of us, all over the world, whether we are dedicated Holmesians or mere casual browsers under the midnight lamp.

The Hound is 100 years old, but has never lost its fascination. When Philip Weller's admirable new book, The Hound Of The Baskervilles: Hunting the Dartmoor Legend, fell through my letterbox I knew that I was in the capable hands of a Holmesian par excellence. The author is chairman of The Baskerville Hounds, a group of enthusiasts dedicated to playing to the utmost what they term "The Great Holmesian Game" -pretending that Holmes and Watson were real and fitting their adventures to actual dates, locations and historical circumstances.

Imagination is always the best set designer. But this book promised to introduce some fascinating actuality. The prospect of expert guidance around Dartmoor, to points from which I could gaze on the originals of doom-wrapped Baskerville Hall, sinister Merripit House and the wastes of the great Grimpen Mire itself, was too good to pass up. I threw my Weller into a gladstone, looked out my stoutest boots and a trusty "Penang lawyer", sent down to Stanfords for the Ordnance map and to Spar for a pound of their strongest shag, and took the M5 into Devonshire on a blustery autumn day of the year 20--.

Baskerville Hall, seat of the Hound-haunted Baskerville family, has always been one of the prime Gothic literary settings - a dark old house in a tree-blanketed hollow under the moor with a sombre tunnel of a drive, twin towers, ivy-smothered walls and that scary Yew Alley where Sir Charles Baskerville died of sheer fright after running for his life from the Hound. There are three main candidates for Baskerville Hall on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, the only feasible location given the relative positions of neighbouring places in the story.

Fowelscombe, not far from the village of Ugborough, was a strong contender, in spite of its lack of a view of the moor. When Doyle was researching on Dartmoor in 1901 this grand Elizabethan mansion - then newly abandoned to decay - possessed twin towers, mullioned windows, crenellations and long wings, just as in the novelist's description of Baskerville Hall. I found Fowelscombe sunk in its hollow in a sad state of dereliction; a poignant, ivy-choked ruin.

The next candidate, Hayford Hall, was perfectly positioned deep in a tree-filled cleft under Dartmoor's rim west of Buckfastleigh, and had an old yew alley leading out on to the moor. The drive was lined with beeches whose leaves were streaming away on the autumn gale. I could only catch a glimpse of tall, tower-like chimneys through the trees, but Weller's book assured me that the house itself answered none of Doyle's description of Baskerville Hall.

The third possible source of inspiration, Brook Manor, lay in a suitably deep valley a couple of miles east of Hayford Hall. What best recommended this ancient house, though, was the character of the man who owned it in the mid-17th century, Richard "Dirty Dick" Cabell. Dirty Dick married Elizabeth Fowell of Fowelscombe, but proved an absolute bounder - so wicked, in fact, that legend says he was hunted to death on Dartmoor by ghostly black dogs.

In the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church at Buckfastleigh I found the mausoleum where Dirty Dick lies sealed into his tomb by a massive stone slab - he has a tendency to walk abroad, apparently. He might well have been Conan Doyle's inspiration for the character of wicked Hugo Baskerville, who became the first of his family to be Hounded to death when he hunted an innocent maiden over the moor by night.

I dentification of the prehistoric stone hut in which Sherlock Holmes camped out on the moor, unbeknown to faithful Watson, could be a nightmare, since Dartmoor possesses the remains of well over a thousand such primitive dwellings. But Weller persuaded me that there were really only two candidates.

It's a fact that Arthur Conan Doyle and Bertram Fletcher Robinson visited Grimspound, Dartmoor's best-known enclosure of hut circles, in 1901. A suitably moody rainstorm welcomed me to the site, where I soon identified the hut in which Doyle and Robinson probably sat to smoke their pipes - Hut No 3, the most thoroughly restored and most central in the big walled compound.

Grimspound lies too far from the central moor to be the correct choice geographically; but Ryder's Rings, an oblong walled settlement a couple of miles south-west of Hayford Hall, is perfectly placed at the top of a steep brackeny slope above the River Avon. Its forgotten hut circles, collapsed in the bracken, chimed exactly with the melancholy mood of the moor.

So to the scenes of the tale's denouement around Merripit House, the remote moorland dwelling of the ominous naturalist Stapleton and his exotically beautiful "sister", Beryl, on the shores of the fearsome quagmire called the great Grimpen Mire. Stapleton is unmasked - by a typically acute piece of Holmesian observation - as a murderous Baskerville bastard intent on extinguishing the young rightful heir to the estate, Sir Henry Baskerville, and claiming title, house and fortune for himself.

Although other candidates exist, only one area properly fits the bill - the moor south of Princetown. Here Fox Tor Mires makes the perfect great Grimpen Mire, while Nun's Cross Farm is surely the original Merripit House. In late afternoon rain I passed the gaunt Napoleonic barrack blocks of Dartmoor prison and walked the puddled track towards Nun's Cross Farm.

The shuttered building lay hidden in a walled quarter-acre of rough garden, its grey walls battered by the weather. Nothing lonelier or more eerie could be imagined - save for the vast flat brown waste of Fox Tor Mires that filled the adjacent valley.

Along the track through a moor fog Sir Henry Baskerville had run screaming from the hellish, fire-breathing hound that Stapleton set on his trail. Here Holmes gunned the Hound down in the nick of time. And over there, where the ruined walls of the old Whiteworks tin mines lay on the moor slopes, the desperate Stapleton, in flight from the collapse of his schemes, had leapt over the tussocks of the great Grimpen Mire until a false step sent the murderer into the ooze to be sucked down to his awful end.

Weller in hand, I gazed on this scene so often conjured in the imagination's eye, now brought starkly and stunningly to life.

Hound basics

OS grid references Baskerville Hall Fowelscombe 692551, Hayford Hall 688671, Brook Manor 713677; Holmes's hut Ryder's Rings in square 6764, Grimspound 701809; Merripit House Nun's Cross Farm 606698;Grimpen Mire Fox Tor Mires in squares 6170, 6270; Abandoned tin mine in Grimpen Mire Whiteworks mine ruins in squares 6170, 6171.

Remember that Fowelscombe, Hayford Hall, Brook Manor and Nun's Cross Farm are private property, and may be viewed only from nearby rights of way.

Reading 
The Hound Of The Baskervilles - Hunting the Dartmoor Legend by Philip Weller is published by Devon Books at £24.95; order from Halsgrove Direct on 01884 243242 or email sales@halsgrove.com.

The Baskerville Hounds - Contact The Kennel Maid, 6 Bramham Moor, Hill Head, Fareham, Hants PO14 3RU.

Source

And number sixteen has a Sherlockian connection. . .

Wales

Thanks IHOSE for the link to the good piece on 221b Baker St.

Smithsonian Magazine.

On the trail of Sherlock Holmes , and leading up to today's summer reading list. . . .

The Sherlock Holmes trail. . .

Hope some of you get to make it.

Sherlock Holmes Exhibition

And on your way back, you may as well make another stop. . .

A Murder to Solve, as Holmes Did

This one actually sounds kinda fun.

And while your booking. . .

Sherlock Holmes craze in movies, on TV and in Cape May

Start planning your next vacation now.

Travel plans?