Sherlock Holmes Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a privately run museum and popular tourist attraction dedicated to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
The house was formerly an eighteenth century boarding house, and was purchased in 1989 on behalf of The Sherlock Holmes International Society. The Museum initially operated a ground-floor restaurant, 'Mrs. Hudson's' with the museum open to the public on the upper floors. The local council agreed to unveil a blue plaque at the house signifying it as the original location of 221B Baker Street, an address which had previously been adopted by the Abbey National Building Society at 215-229 Baker Street.
The Museum - like the address itself - was to prove controversial, and was denounced as a 'Tourist trap' by the competing Sherlock Holmes Society of London, which disapproved of the project while it was busily arranging the opening of another Holmes museum in Switzerland that finally opened in October 1990. In the late 1990s, the restaurant closed and the Museum's lucrative shop moved from the attic to the ground floor.
The Museum also operates one of the few Victorian Hansom Cabs remaining in the country, but it had to be withdrawn a few years ago because it was refused entry to the Royal Parks as it carried the Museum's advertisement on the side panels. There are plans to bring it out again in mid 2006.
The Museum hires a number of actors in character. A Victorian era policeman acts as doorman. Several Victorian housemaids in attendance can be seen around the museum. A Dr Watson character is stationed in the first-floor living room. Sherlock Holmes impersonators can be seen handing out cards at Baker Street tube station, and around tourist attractions in central London. These actors are of a wide variety of believability - some bear strong physical resemblances and display an impressive knowledge of the canon to tourists, while others bear no resemblance at all!
Despite its short history, the museum continues to be a highly successful attraction, drawing in several hundred thousand visitors a year.
[edit] The tour
The Museum consists of a tour of three floors of the small Grade II listed Georgian house, with two rooms on each floor, arranged to resemble the rooms occupied by Sherlock Holmes. The sitting room is faithfully reproduced, usually with an actor pretending to be Dr Watson or Mrs Hudson in attendance. Sherlock Holmes' bedroom adjoins. The second and third floor contain a few waxworks and display cases purporting to contain 'exhibits' from the cases. The Museum's staff and programme eagerly propound that this is the 'real' 221B, and that Sherlock Holmes lived there(at least according to the stories). The rooms of Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson are on the second floor. ..............
[edit] Numbering dispute
The address 221B was the subject of a protracted dispute between the Museum and the nearby Abbey National building. Since the 1930s, the Royal Mail had been delivering mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes to Abbey National, and they had employed a special secretary to deal with such correspondence. The Museum went through several appeals for such mail to be delivered to them, on the grounds that they could create mail order jobs from replying to the letters with a gift catalogue. Although these initiatives were all unsuccessful, the issue was resolved in 2002 when Abbey National vacated the building after seventy years, and the mail is now currently delivered to the Museum.
As for the provenance of the 'real' 221B, see 221B Baker Street.
