Sherlockian Sojourns #76: 'Sherlock, Shakespeare & The Shire'

Having spent much of the past week in Scotland, it was time for a final sojourn before returning home. Catching a train from Preston to Blackburn, I changed onto a train to Whalley in the Ribble Valley. A fifteen minute bus journey then took me to the Shireburn Arms, where I had stayed on a previous sojourn, visiting Stonyhurst, the boarding school attended by the young Conan Doyle. It was to Stonyhurst that I was going again, this time to see the inside of it, as its museum, described as ‘the oldest museum in the English-speaking world’, was hosting an exhibition ‘The Shire, Shakespeare and Sherlock’, uncovering the fascinating ties between the Ribble Valley and three literary giants – J.R.R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (The Ribble Valley was the inspiration for The Shire in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’, the school has a First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, and Conan Doyle was an ‘old boy’).

A five minute walk brought me to the entrance to the drive down to the school, and around twenty minutes later I was walking down the side of the building to enter via the reception area.

  

 

I was shown into a side-room to sign in, and take a visitor’s badge. My entry to the museum was not supposed to be for another half-an-hour, but soon after arriving a family also arrived with a hyperactive toddler, so the guide agreed to take us up early. Our first point of call was the Arundell Library, which included Jesuit treasures such as Sir Thomas More’s felted hat and nightcap, stuffed animals and birds, and books on all walls, floor to ceiling. The majority of these were provided by James Arundell, 10th Baron Wardour, who attended Stonyhurst in 1796. On leaving, he spent the rest of his life collecting a unique library for the College, paid for out of his personal income. His intention was to collect books that would provide everything a young Catholic would need for his education and formation, leading to his collecting around 4,000 books. When Arundell died in 1834, his widow, Mary, faithfully followed her husband’s instructions, expressed in his dying words ‘Remember Mary, the books are for Stonyhurst’.  

I was informed that although they were happy for me to take photographs, these could only be for personal use, and not shared online.

I then moved into the exhibition which was in a side-room to the Library. The exhibition comprised items from the Museum’s collection, relating to the three authors, with only the Conan Doyle display featuring items specifically connected to the author, those items relating to Tolkien and Shakespeare were items referred to in the author’s works, with the appropriate quote next to them, including a 1960s cope made of 'Space Age' material linked to a quote about ‘Gandalf the Grey’.

The key exhibit was a row of four desks, the left of which was used by Conan Doyle. Despite being known for their strict discipline, the Jesuits seem to have been relaxed about the boys’ practice of carving names into the wooden desktops, with some of the names being quite elaborately engraved, and ‘A Doyle’ is carved faintly into this desk. It took a little bit of looking, but I soon found it. Easier to find was the name ‘A Watson’ (Alfred Watson) carved clearly on the right-hand desk, a contemporary of Conan Doyle and a possible inspiration for the name of Holmes’ partner and chronicler, Dr. John Watson . (In the original draft, Watson was called ‘Ormond Sacker’ before being changed, possibly to his old schoolfriend’s name).  

Also part of the exhibition were several bound school reports with Conan Doyle’s name on, a playbill from an 1872 Stonyhurst production of ‘The Omnibus’ (described as ‘A Farce in One Act’) in which he played ‘Farrier’s Boy’, and school photos including one of the school cricket team. An information board also highlighted Conan Doyle’s contemporaries, the Moriarty brothers (Johnny and Michael) and Patrick Sherlock, as well as Stonyhurst acting as inspiration for Baskerville Hall.

There were also exhibits linked to canonical quotes, including a stuffed python (representing the reptilian Professor Moriarty, rather than ‘the Speckled Band’, which instead was represented by some preserved smaller snakes), the Stonyhurst Doctor’s medical bag, poison-tipped blow-darts, and a chalice featuring several garnets (or carbuncles).

Having gone around the exhibition several times, I was taken down a level to the final exhibition room which featured a number of historic documents, including a red velvet prayer book commissioned by the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor. Elizabeth I’s older half-sister. The book was still being bound when Mary Tudor died in 1558, and by an unknown route, it was passed to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who was also Catholic, who even carried it to her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1586. The book was smuggled out of England by her Lady-in-Waiting, and passed to the English Jesuits in 1620, who have loaned it to Stonyhurst.

Moving along to the end of the gallery, there were the two jewels of Stonyhurst’s collection. The first is the copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. James Arundell bought this in 1813 for the sum of £37 and 16 shillings. It was lacking its distinctive portrait, but his wife managed to find a portrait from another incomplete Folio and had it pasted into the Stonyhurst copy. Of perhaps 750 copies printed, today 235 copies of the first edition survive. None are perfect and unique, but the Stonyhurst copy is one of the few copies to include all the plays.

The other was a sumptuous gold-embroidered cope, decorated with Tudor roses and portcullises, from a set of vestments used by the household of Henry VII and bequeathed by him to Westminster Abbey. It is then said to have been borrowed back by Henry VIII to wear at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. This cope had spent a long time on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, but was now back at Stonyhurst.

The attendant was keen to give an extended talk on both these items, but I was aware that I was at risk of missing my bus, and having over an hour to wait if I did so. Luckily another attendant appeared in the nick of time, and took me back to reception to sign out. I then managed to get back to the bus stop opposite the Shireburn Arms in just under twenty minutes, arriving just five minutes before the bus did.

Back at Whalley Station, I had a ten minute wait for my train to Salford Crescent, from where I caught another train one stop to Manchester Deansgate. From here it was a two minute walk to Castle Street, which runs alongside the thirty-nine mile Bridgewater Canal, which stretches from Runcorn to Leigh, and was constructed by the Duke of Bridgewater, reaching Manchester by 1765.  Its purpose was to transport coal from his mines near Worsley to Manchester to fuel the developing industries.  At the Manchester end, in Castlefield, wharfs were created to land the coal and one of those coal wharfs was located beside Castle Street.

This street appears in Granada’s dramatisation of ‘The Sign of Four’, in the scenes with Holmes, Watson and Toby, where Holmes asks Watson if he brought his pistol. A strategically placed tarpaulin covered the more modern aspects of this road.

   

   

A short walk though crowds lining the streets for Manchester Pride, I made my way to Manchester Science and Industry Museum, for an interesting exhibition of items relating to Stephen Hawking.

    

     

Moving on into Central Manchester, passing the old Granada studios, I browsed in a few shops, before making my way to Back Piccadilly, a road that features in ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009) in the scene where, after the fight, Dredger (Robert Maillet) jumps out of the window into the street below, followed by Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and Watson (Jude Law).

   

   

From here it was a short walk to Manchester Piccadilly, and my train home after almost a week sojourning.

Sherlockian Sojourns #75: 'When (I) Got Back to Scotland" [BLAC]

 

DAY 1

It was time for a Scotland Megatrip. Following a failed sojourn the previous day to the Lake District, scuppered by public transport problems, I caught a train from Carlisle to Edinburgh. My main plans for the day were the Fringe (including two Sherlockian shows – click here for reviews), but I also planned to visit (and revisit some visited on a previous occasion) a few Sherlockian sites.

On my way to my first show, I popped into Blackwells Edinburgh, and was pleased to see a familiar portrait on the wall.

Having a break between shows my next point of call was Picardy Place, birthplace of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where a statue of Sherlock Holmes was reinstalled in September 2023, having been stowed away on and off for many years during local tram construction and repairs. The life-sized bronze sculpture was sculpted by Gerald Ogilvie Laing in memory of Doyle’s sleuth, and was originally unveiled in June 1991, slightly closer to the birthplace of 11 Picardy Place.

     

   

Unfortunately the birthplace itself is derelict, and surrounded by hoardings, but I managed to get a few photos of the upstairs portion, before retiring to ’The Conan Doyle’ Public House for a brief pint (of Pepsi) prior to returning to the Fringe, passing ‘The Penny Black’ Pub on my way.

     

 

A few hours later, finding myself close to University of Edinburgh Medical School, where Conan Doyle was a student from 1876, I popped in to take a photo of his commemorative plaque.

Later on, walking to my accommodation for the night, I passed ‘The Salisbury Arms’, which was built around 1820 as a building called Belleville, by the Bell family, prominent surgeons, advocates and writers of the time. From this family came Joseph Bell, the medical lecturer widely regarded as the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s famous detective. It is also possible that Conan Doyle visited on occasion. The pub was previously known as ‘The Gold Medal’, but has evolved through iterations including ‘The Firkin’ and ‘The Crags’, before taking on its current name.

  

After a full day at the Fringe, it was time for an early night, as there were four more days of sojourning to go.

 

 

DAY 2

Catching a 9.30 train the next morning, an hour later I was in Dundee, the fourth-largest city in Scotland. A short bus journey then brought me to Dundee Museum of Transport, which highlights the stories of local transport pioneers and innovators (including an aviation pioneer with a familiar surname), the story of the ‘Tay Bridge Disaster’, and presents a diverse range of vehicles from both local and national collections.

       

Making my way by bus back though central Dundee, I reached ‘4 Windsor Terrace’, 251 Perth Road. In 1910, William Smith, an osteopath who studied medicine with Conan Doyle at Edinburgh University, opened a practice here. Unfortunately he also died there, of pneumonia, in 1912 – just two years after opening his practice, having returned to Scotland having spent much of his career working in America.

  

Smith was cited as an inspiration for Doctor John H Watson by his son Cuthbert, who writing in Iowa paper the Des Moines Sunday Register in 1938, stated:  “The detective’s companion Watson was my father William Smith. The character of Watson was written around my father but it was merely a friendly gesture on Doyle’s part.”  Cuthbert went on to tell readers that as a child his father had taken him to meet Doyle and their shared tutor Joseph Bell in Edinburgh – a rare moment where the characters and their author were together. Cuthbert Smith added in his article that the choice of his father as the inspiration for Watson “was not based on any personal merits connected with the remarkable character of the stories of Joseph [Bell]”.

Back in central Dundee, I found myself looking at a sizeable representation in bronze of the famous cartoon character, Desperate Dan. This statue has strode along the High Street in Dundee since 2001. Standing 2.5m (8 feet) in height, Dan is depicted with his faithful pooch Dawg in tow and stalked by another cartoon favourite, a catapult-wielding Minnie the Minx. Dan's character was created by local Dundee publishers D.C. Thomson and has appeared in ‘The Dandy’ comic since the 1930s, while Minnie features in the Dandy's sister comic ‘The Beano’. The statue is the work of Angus-based artists Tony and Susie Morrow, and was funded from public and private sources.

    

Both Dan and Minnie have appeared as Holmes in print. The former in ‘The Dandy Book 1986’ in a story called ‘The Hound of Cactusville’, where after seeing a Sherlock Holmes movie at the cinema, Dan and his Aunt Aggie spot a glowing hound on a rooftop, leading Dan to dress as Sherlock Holmes to investigate. The latter in ‘The Beano #3922’ (17th February 2018), in a story called ‘The Case of the Missing Skateboard/Crown’. When Dennis the Menace loses his skateboard, Minnie the Minx decides to investigate, also dressed as Holmes, finding the case to be more complex than originally thought.

Returning to the station, I had just time to eat my lunch by the river before making my way inside to wait for my next train.  (A poster in the Waiting Room indicated that Mary Shelley wrote the book of ‘Frankenstein’ in Dundee).

   

My journey required three trains, the first from Dundee to Perth, then Perth to Inverness, and finally Inverness to Nairn, and took just under three-and-a-half hours. It was the station at Nairn that interested me, as it stood in for Inverness Station in ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ (1970), with the bridge between platforms featuring prominently with the silent monks parading over it.

  

Nairn is also where Ogilvie Laing’s Edinburgh ‘Sherlock Holmes’ statue was renovated (at Black Isle Bronze). Catching the next train back to Inverness, I made my way to the Youth Hostel for a rest.

 

 

DAY 3

The next day it was time for more ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ locations and Loch Ness itself. Catching a coach from Inverness Bus Station, it was a thirty-five minute trip to Urquhart Castle, once one of Scotland’s largest castles, sitting on the banks of the Loch. The castle has witnessed some of the most dramatic chapters in Scotland’s history. This is where St Columba is said to have worked miracles in the 6th century, where acts of chivalry and defiance provided inspiration during the Wars of Independence and where the MacDonald Lords of the Isles struggled with the Crown for power. It was in the ruins of the castle that a submarine disguised as the Loch Ness Monster was being built.

          

Having taken photos from all angles and utilised the free audio tour, I watched a film about the castle’s history, and bought lots of items in the gift shop. Returning to the car park, I caught a coach back into the nearby village of Drumnadrochit, from where I could catch a bus to my next port of call. This arrived earlier than expected and on the other side of the road than I was expecting. Speaking to the driver, it transpired that he had to go to another nearby village before returning to the stop where I was waiting, but he let me board anyway for no extra fare.

Around fifteen minutes later, and I was alighting in the village of Balnain. The nearby Loch Meiklie stood in for Loch Ness in some scenes in the film, including one where Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Gabrielle (Genevieve Page) have a picnic served by Watson (Colin Blakely) by the Loch. A five minute walk brought me to the stone bridge which crosses the River Enrick at the eastern end of the Loch, in front of which the picnic took place. Unfortunately due to the water level rising since then, I was unable to sit in exactly the same place to eat my lunch, but could identify the rock sticking out of the water that indicated where it had been.

       

            

Returning to the main road, I made my way along to St. Ninian’s Scottish Episcopal Church, which featured a walk along the side of Loch Meiklie, with relevant bible verses. My hope was to get a good view of the nearby Kilmartin Hall, which appears in the film as ‘The Caledonian Hotel’. However, the path ran out just a little too early.

  

Retracing my steps back along the main road, I reached the drive leading down to Kilmartin Hall. Despite it being a private residence, there were no signs indicating that it was private property, so I dashed down the drive, took a few photos and then dashed back to the road.

  

  

Back at the bus stop, I had over an hour to wait for my bus, and there was no seating in the bus shelter so I had to sit on the grassy bank next to it, trying to avoid the thistles which were growing wild there. Back in Drumnadrochit, I caught a coach back to Urquhart Castle, where after a short wait, I caught a connecting coach to Fort William where I was spending the night.

  

 

DAY 4

My final day in Scotland was spent on a side-mission, catching a train from Fort William to Glenfinnan. From here it was a twenty-five minute walk along a set-out trail over Loch Shiel to reach the Glenfinnan Viaduct. The viaduct was built from 1897 to 1901 from mass concrete, and has 21 semi-circular spans of 50 feet (15 m). It is the longest concrete railway bridge in Scotland at 416 yards (380 m), and crosses the River Finnan at a height of 100 feet (30 m). However, despite being an architectural marvel, the viaduct is best known for appearing in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, with the ‘Hogwarts Express’ being filmed going across it in the first three films. 

  

  

Having taken photos from all sides, I took the opportunity to walk to the nearby Glenfinnan Monument, erected in 1814 and dedicated to the Scottish Highlanders who fought in the Jacobite Army during the Jacobite rising of 1745.

   

Returning to the paths overlooking the Viaduct, I joined an increasing crowd, as four times a day, ‘The Jacobite Steam Train’ goes over the Viaduct. After around half-an-hour’s wait the train came into view and puffed across the viaduct. I managed to get a video of the train without any of the assembled hordes ruining my shot. Everyone then moved off, but staying put, five minutes later I saw a modern train go across in the other direction.

Retracing my steps to Glenfinnan Station, I visited their museum providing interesting facts and stories about the spectacular Glenfinnan Viaduct and life on the West Highland Line, whilst outdoor exhibits told the story of a rural Scottish railway station over the last century.

 

 

Having got some lunch, I waited for the bus back to Fort William, which arrived around ten minutes late. I was initially concerned whether there would be enough room on the small bus, but managed to squeeze on. However, due to heavy traffic the bus began running later and later and I was concerned that I might miss my connection at the bus station. Reaching the bus station at 1.55pm, I was just in time to join the queue for the 2pm bus to Glasgow. After a three-and-a-half hour journey, I was making my way across Glasgow to catch a train down to Preston as I had a final non-Scottish sojourn planned.