Sherlockian Sojourns #43: ‘Eyford’ – A Strange, Out-of-the-Way Place

Crowthorne, a large village in the Bracknell Forest district of south-eastern Berkshire, was previously known to me for being the location of Broadmoor Hospital, the oldest of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England. However, the Sherlockian scholar, Bernard Davies identified it as ‘Eyford’, the location for part of ‘’The Engineer’s Thumb’. This was one of the two cases brought to Holmes by Watson  (the other being Colonel Warburton’s madness, possibly a friend of Watson’s from his military service).  

‘We shall want you to come to-night by the last train...to Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders of Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a train from Paddington which would bring you there at about 11:15.’  [ENGI]

Davies reviewed the three railway stations in Berkshire served by another railway station at Reading and concluded that Crowthorne matched the description of Eyford. The village was rural and only gained a railway station in 1859 because of its proximity to Wellington College and this was actually the name of the station until 1928.

Having a day’s leave and an evening appointment in nearby Guildford, I travelled down to Guildford by train, before catching another train to Crowthorne. On alighting I took several photos of the station where Victor Hatherley travelled to meet Lysander Stark, and where Holmes and Watson also travelled to investigate their client’s case.

   

  

  

‘I reached the little dim-lit station after eleven o’clock. I was the only passenger who got out there, and there was no one upon the platform save a single sleepy porter with a lantern’   [ENGI]

I then walked off in search of the building where Stark and his accomplices ran their counterfeiting operation and where Hatherley lost his thumb. After a short distance, and reaching a roundabout, I made my way along a narrow pavement for half-a-mile, before turning down a side road. After a total of twenty minutes walking, I reached Ambarrow Farm, identified by Davies as matching the description in Watson’s account perfectly. The building was behind a locked gate with an intercom, but I managed to take photos from the road.

‘The road topped a low hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under’    [ENGI]

 

Retracing my steps, I turned up a nearby footpath, which passed behind the back of the building, allowing me to take further photos of the other side of the building.

 

Returning to the station, it was a short wait for a train back to Guildford, where after browsing some shops and eating a meal, it was time for my evening’s entertainment, the latest offering from Mischief Theatre company, ‘Good Luck, Studio’.   (Click here for a full review)