Sherlockian Sojourns #69: ‘A considerable area of country’ (The Kent/Sussex Border)

After a couple of days touring locations from ‘Doctor Who’ in Wales, it was time for three days of visits to sites in the counties of Kent and Sussex. In the main, these relate to cases involving Inspector Stanley Hopkins, a Scotland Yard detective and a student of Holmes's deductive methods, who attempts to apply them in his own investigations. Holmes, however, is very critical of Hopkins' ability to apply them well. Hopkins refers at least three cases to Holmes, all within the South-East areas of England and London (and all collected in ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes’), including ‘The Golden Pince-Nez’, set in 1894 in Chatham, Kent, ‘Black Peter’, set in 1895 in the Weald, and ‘The Abbey Grange’, set in 1897 in Chislehurst  (visited on a previous occasion). There were also some Kentish filming locations that I wanted to visit.

 

Day One: Part One - “Are you alright, Penshurst ?”

Catching a train from East Croydon, I made my way to Edenbridge Town, catching a #231 bus to Penshurst Place, a 14th century Manor House, once the property of King Henry VIII. It was then left to his son King Edward VI and granted to Sir William Sidney in 1552. The Sidney family have been in continuous occupation for more than four-hundred-and-seventy years since. 

Arriving at around 10.30am, only the Gardens were open, with the House not opening until 11.30am. I therefore ate a late breakfast in the café, before paying for entry and purchasing a guidebook. Having wandered around the gardens, I found myself at the Toy Museum which had just opened for the day.  Created out of an old carpenters’ workshop, the museum is part of a range of ‘Gothic’ stables of 1836, and features wonderful collection of toys on display from bygone eras.

It was then time to enter the House, having let the initial queue die down, as I was aware that it was the first room that I was most interested in, the medieval Baron’s Hall, crowned by an original sixty-feet high chestnut beamed ceiling, which was completed in 1341 as a country retreat for the Lord Mayor of London. It measures sixty-two-feet long by thirty-nine-feet wide, and was described by the writer John Julius Norwich as ‘one of the grandest rooms in the world’.

The fencing scenes for ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ (1985) were filmed here, with the location referenced by Rathe (Anthony Higgins) when he asks one of the boys, “Are you alright, Penshurst ?”. [I have also visited the four other locations used for Brompton School – Eton College, Brasenose College Oxford, Radley College, and Belvoir Castle]   The same Hall went on to provide the backdrop for another, more famous, swordfight two years later in Rob Reiner’s ‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)  - “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”.

   

  

Having taken photos of the Hall from all directions, I made my way into the Crypt, where there was a display of costumes from ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ (2008) which filmed in the House, as well as a piece of 'prop furniture' used to conceal a later 17th Century cabinet in the Tapestry Room when the 2015 BBC dramatisation of ‘Wolf Hall’ was being filmed there.

   

Moving upstairs to the State Dining Room, a window looked down on the Baron’s Hall, allowing me to take a photo from above.

 

I then continued wandering through the House, with multiple rooms being identified as featuring in ‘Wolf Hall’, in particular The Long Gallery.

   
   

  

 

Exiting the House, I wandered around the Gardens again, before exiting via the Gift Shop (purchasing five postcards and a Greetings Card with a hand-drawn portrait of the Baron’s Hall on it). 

Returning to the nearby bus stop, I caught a bus to Tunbridge Wells, where I spent half-an-hour browsing on The Pantiles.

 

Day One: Part Two - 'The remains of widespread woods'

Catching a bus which took me back some of my previous journey, then turned off a different way, after around twenty minutes through mainly country lanes, passing Groombridge Place (Hurlstone Manor in ‘The Valley of Fear’) which is currently not open to the public, I reached Hartfield, an East Sussex town famous for being the home of A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books, and the location for the "Poohsticks Bridge". However, I was visiting the area due to its connection to the case of ‘Black’ Peter Carey, in 'Black Peter'. This is a story that has a special place in my fan heart. as due to circumstance it was the last of the short stories that I read. I realised that it was the last one before reading it, so put off reading it for several months, so that I still had one canonical tale left to experience for as long as possible.

It was to the local church, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, that I turned my attention, as a possible parish church for the local vicar who remonstrated with Carey about his drunken conduct.

  

  

‘(Carey) was an intermittent drunkard, and when he had the fit on him he was a perfect fiend…..He was summoned once for a savage assault upon the old vicar, who had called upon him to remonstrate with him upon his conduct. In short, Mr. Holmes, you would go far before you found a more dangerous man than Peter Carey’.  - Hopkins [BLAC]

 

I then stopped for some lunch before catching the next bus to another candidate for the vicar’s parish church, Holy Trinity Church, in the hamlet of Colemans Hatch which lies to the south-west of Hartfield, and is part of the joint benefice with St Mary's.

   

Walking up nearby Shepherd’s Hill, I reached Forest House, identified by Bernard Davies as ‘Woodman’s Lee’, Carey’s home. The building was undergoing extensive renovation, but I managed to take photos from the road.

 

        

‘Captain Peter Carey was born in ’45–fifty years of age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher…..In 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman’s Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex’ - Hopkins   [BLAC]

‘He had built himself a wooden outhouse–he always called it the ‘cabin’–a few hundred yards from his house, and it was here that he slept every night. It was a little, single-roomed hut, sixteen feet by ten. He kept the key in his pocket, made his own bed, cleaned it himself, and allowed no other foot to cross the threshold’.    - Hopkins  [BLAC]

 

I then attempted to get a cab to my next location, but after two unsuccessful tries with no drivers being available to take my fare, instead I had a forty-five minute walk to my next location, the former site of the station where Holmes and Watson alight on their journey from London, now Riverview Business Park. The station is now mostly demolished, but vestiges of one platform remain, and the Coal Merchant’s office is now a café. The line opened in 1866 and closed in 1867.

   

‘Alighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some miles through the remains of widespread woods, which were once part of that great forest which for so long held the Saxon invaders at bay–the impenetrable “weald,” for sixty years the bulwark of Britain’   [BLAC]

 

A further ten minute walk brought me to The Brambletye Hotel which was a former hunting lodge and became a hotel in 1866. Watson’s literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, frequented it, and it is where Hopkins reserved rooms for Holmes and Watson and where Neligan, who was blamed for Carey’s murder, had been staying. It also has a ‘Black Peter’ Bar and Restaurant.

 

            

‘Well, Mr. Holmes, I am very much obliged to you and to your friend for coming down to help me. As it turns out your presence was unnecessary, and I would have brought the case to this successful issue without you, but, none the less, I am grateful. Rooms have been reserved for you at the Brambletye Hotel, so we can all walk down to the village together’ – Hopkins  [BLAC]

‘I find that young Neligan arrived at the Brambletye Hotel on the very day of the crime. He came on the pretence of playing golf. His room was on the ground-floor, and he could get out when he liked’  -Hopkins [BLAC]

 

 The electronic display at the bus stop outside indicated that I had just missed a bus and would have to wait fifty-minutes. However, when planning the sojourn, I had planned to catch the 5.11pm bus which according to my watch would be in ten minutes’ time. Proved to be correct, the bus arrived on time, and just over ten minutes after catching it, I was alighting in East Grinstead. Ten minutes after this, I was back on a train to East Croydon, and then home to prepare for the next day’s sojourn.

 

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Day Two: Part One – ‘One hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road’

Making my way to London Victoria, I caught a train to Rochester, for a brief detour, to Baggins Book Bazaar, which claims to be ‘England’s largest rare and secondhand bookshop’. 

 

Having spent forty-five minutes browsing the shelves, purchasing a few books and some ‘Book and Magazine Collector’ issues with Conan Doyle content. An eight minute train ride brought me to Higham Station. It was here that Holmes and Watson arrived on their journey to Yoxley Old Place in ‘The Golden Pince-Nez’.

‘After a long and weary journey, we alighted at a small station some miles from Chatham. While a horse was being put into a trap at the local inn, we snatched a hurried breakfast’.  [GOLD]

 

A short walk brought me to two possibilities for the local inn, The Railway Tavern and The Chequers Inn, both now closed.

  

  

A forty minute walk brought me to ‘Barrett’s Folly’, identified as Yoxley Old Place by Bernard Davies. This house looks south-east over the corner of land formed by the junction of Gravesend Road and Green Farm Lane, at the end of a  public footpath.

‘Some years ago, this country house, Yoxley Old Place, was taken by an elderly man, who gave the name of Professor Coram. He was an invalid, keeping his bed half the time, and the other half hobbling round the house with a stick or being pushed about the grounds by the gardener in a Bath chair………the gate of the garden is a hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road. It opens with a latch, and there is nothing to prevent anyone from walking in’.  [GOLD]

Catching a bus from Shorne Crossroads, I soon found myself at Chatham Bus Station, where I popped into a local shopping centre to get some lunch.

 

 

Day Two: Part Two – ‘Working…down in the docks’

After a short walk I reached Fort Amherst described as ‘Britain's biggest & best Napoleonic Fort’. This includes tunnels which appeared as the Parisian Catacombs in ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ (2011). However, unfortunately on reaching the Fort, it became clear that Tunnel Tours were unavailable from 1st September 2024 until 5th December 2024, when they will reopen for their ‘Glimpse of Christmas Past’ event.

  

I therefore continued on for a further fifteen minutes to my main port of call, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, a maritime museum on part of the site of the former royal/naval dockyard.

The Dockyard spans eighty acres, and has over one-hundred buildings and structures dating from the Georgian and Victorian periods to the present day. This has made it an attractive location for period filming over the years, with ‘Call The Midwife’ getting most of its exterior scenes filmed here. In terms of Sherlockian productions, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009), ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ (2011), ‘Mr. Holmes’ (2015), ‘Arthur and George’ (2015), ‘Holmes and Watson’ (2018), and ‘Enola Holmes 2’ (2022), were all filmed here. Other productions include ‘The Shadow In The North’ (2007) [as the exterior of North Star Castings gun shop], ‘Great Expectations’ (2012), ’Muppets Most Wanted’ (2014), and ‘The Crown’ (2016).

Paying for entry, which allows free re-entry for a year, I made my way down to the main Dockyard, picking up a ticket for the ‘Ropery Experience’, as this building features in multiple Sherlockian productions. First, I made my way to the far-end of the Dockyard (passing a ‘CTM’ tour), and the Main Gate, which features as the gate for Pentonville Prison in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009).

  

I then made my way back to the roads around the Victorian Ropery, which appears as Pentonville Prison Yard in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009), as a Japanese street in ‘Mr. Holmes’, as the outside of the Metropolitan Police Station and George Edalji's lodgings in ‘Arthur and George’, and as London streets and Docks in ‘Holmes and Watson’.

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         MH    

The exterior of the match factory in ‘Enola Holmes 2’ was also built here, and the location was also used for the exteriors of the Paragon Theatre and the match girls’ house.

  

I then entered the quarter-of-a-mile long Ropewalk, which appeared as the Meinhard Munitions Factory in ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’.

 

The building was also used for the Boxing Club in ‘Holmes and Watson’, but this part of the building was not open to the public.

A short distance away was the Tarred Yarn Store, which appeared as the Tavern in ‘Holmes and Watson’, but again the part used was not open to the public.

Having time before my Ropery Experience, I went to see the UK’s largest collection of RNLI historic lifeboats, seeing if it was possible to gain access to the nearby slipways, one of which appeared in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009). Unfortunately, this was not possible, but I managed to work out where the appropriate slipway was.

Returning to the Ropery, I watched a ropemaking demonstration, before ending in the Ropewalk again. It was then time to exit, but on my way back to the bus stop, I managed to reach the entrance to Turk’s Boatyard, which led to the previously identified ‘Slipway #5’ which appeared in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009). Given that this was a working boatyard there was no public access, but I managed to take some photos from outside.

  

I then waited and waited at the bus stop, but there was no sign of a bus back to the railway station. Eventually, I gave up and called for a cab, which got me to the station with a few minutes to spare for my train home.