“If the chief constructor of the Navy desired to consult them, even he was forced to go to the Woolwich office for the purpose” – Mycroft Holmes [BRUC]
Elsewhere in this blog, I have indicated that one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories is ‘The Bruce Partington Plans’, in which Holmes has to investigate the theft of submarine plans and the unexplained death of a young man (Arthur Cadogan West) on the Underground who seemed to have been travelling without a ticket. I therefore decided to visit the various London locations associated with this story. [Please note this Sojourn does include SPOILERS]
Catching a train to London Waterloo, and then from Waterloo East to Woolwich Arsenal, I found myself arriving at the station where Holmes and Watson did in order to interview Arthur Cadogan West’s family and work colleagues.
A short walk brought me to Beresford Street. It was on this street that the Barnard’s Theatre Royal was situated, where Cadogan West was on his way to with his fiancée, Violet Westbury, before making an exclamation and running off into the fog.
Originally on the site there was the New Portable Theatre which opened in 1834. This was replaced by a permanent structure in 1835, called the West Kent Theatre. This Theatre was renamed the Duchess of Kent's Theatre in 1837. The Theatre was again renamed in 1892, this time to the Barnard's Theatre Royal, and was later reconstructed and renovated in 1900. The Theatre would later become known as the simpler named Theatre Royal. But its final change of name came when it was renamed the Woolwich Empire in the 1920s. It was finally demolished in 1960.
Crossing Beresford Street, I found myself at the Royal Arsenal itself. It was originally known as the Woolwich Warren, having begun on land previously used as a domestic warren in the grounds of a Tudor house, Tower Place. Much of the initial history of the site is linked with that of the Office of Ordnance, which purchased the Warren in the late 17th century. Over the next two centuries, as operations grew and innovations were pursued, the site expanded massively. At the time of the First World War the Arsenal covered 1,285 acres and employed close to 80,000 people. It was here that Cadogan West worked, and from where the plans of the Bruce Partington Submarine were stolen. The submarine would have been built at the nearby Woolwich Dockyard.
Catching the Circle Line, I made my way to Embankment, and the nearby Charing Cross Hotel. It was to the Smoking Room of this hotel that Hugo Oberstein was lured by Holmes, and the plans recovered.
Retracing my steps to Embankment Station, I caught the District Line to Earl’s Court, exiting passing the Police Box, which always gives me a thrill of excitement, I crossed over to Hogarth Road. Noted Sherlockian scholar, Bernard Davies attributed 28 Hogarth Road to be 13 Caulfield Gardens, the home of the master spy, Hugo Oberstein. It was here that Cadogan West was murdered and from where his body was placed on the roof of the train. Here Holmes, Watson, and the police arrest one of the conspirators Colonel Valentine Walter, the brother of the official custodian of the plans. The back windows project to a few feet of the parapet of the railway cutting. No 28 had an extra extension on the back with a large window which made it even closer to the railway line. Hogarth Road is the only street close to Cromwell Road Junction where trains temporarily stopped allowing the body to be placed on the train roof.
It was then time to make my way home, listening to Stephen Fry’s reading of the case.
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