Sherlockian Sojourns – Special #5: 'Return to the Moor' - Part One

 Introduction

Having made two previous trips to Devon and Dartmoor, I decided to visit some sites that I had previously missed, relating to the novel and several individuals to which Conan Doyle owed a debt to varying degrees – namely Bertram Fletcher Robinson, George Newnes, Harry Baskerville, and George Turnavine Budd. As outlined in a previous post, I have watched/listened to over fifty dramatisations of HOUND, and in tribute to two of my favourites (09 Lives & British Touring Shakespeare), I found myself visiting several graveyards.

In preparing this sojourn I was indebted to 'Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes & Devon: A Complete Tour & Companion', written by Brian W. Pugh, Paul Spiring, and S. Bhanji, and published by MX Publishing.

 

Day 1: Newton Abbot/Plymouth

‘Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform’   [HOUN – Chapter 6].

 My journey started, as did Watson, Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer’s did, at Paddington station, but instead of the reasonable time of 10.30am, my train was at 8.05am. After a two-and-a-half hour journey, I found myself at Newton Abbot Railway Station, which was opened on Wednesday 30^th December 1846 by South Devon Railway Company. It was here on 23^rd August 1902 that Conan Doyle met up with Jean Leckie (later his second wife) with the intention of showing her some of the ‘Baskerville Moor Country’, and was also where the body of Conan Doyle’s friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson was taken to from London Paddington on 24^th January 1907 prior to his funeral. It is also likely that Conan Doyle began a journey to Sherborne from here on 3^rd June 1901, having spent the previous night with Fletcher Robinson in nearby Ipplepen.

 

I was just in time for a bus into the centre, where I caught a bus into Ipplepen, and my second port of call, Park Hill House, the house to which Fletcher Robinson and his family moved in 1882. On Sunday 2^nd June 1901, as part of their research trip, Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson visited Ipplepen to see the latter’s parents (referred to in a letter from Conan Doyle to his mother), and although it is not known for certain if they visited Park Hill House together, the coach house used to garage the vehicle in which they travelled is now called Park Hill Lodge, and is situated two doors to the left of Park Hill House, alongside Moor Road. The lintel of the carriage house doors can still be seen above the two newer windows. Fletcher Robinson’s parents died in 1903 and 1906, and he then owned the property himself between July 1906 and January 1907.

Continuing along the road, and turning right, after around 10 minutes, I reached Honeysuckle Cottage, where Henry Matthews Baskerville who was employed by the Fletcher Robinsons as a ‘domestic’ at Park Hill House, lived. By the time of Conan Doyle’s research trip in 1901, Henry was the ‘Head Coachman’ and was responsible for one ‘Assistant Coachman’, three coaches and two horses. It was he who drove his master’s son and Conan Doyle around the moor. Henry worked for the Robinson family for about twenty years until 1905. (see Part Two)

A short distance further on, should have been a bench and plaque dedicated to the memory of Bertram Fletcher Robinson, highlighting his connection to ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. However, despite looking for almost twenty minutes, I couldn’t find it.

Only a short distance further on was St. Andrew’s Church, in whose graveyard Bertram Fletcher Robinson is buried, as are his parents  (Graveyard #1 of the week). The church also features two stained-glass windows dedicated to the Robinson family, both designed by the Victorian artist C.E. Kemp, who also produced windows for York Minster. The southern window in commemoration of Joseph Fletcher Robinson was commissioned by his widow, Emily, in 1903. The northern window was commissioned by Bertram in commemoration of his mother in 1906, and when he died six months later, his name was added to the inscription.

 

 

Having grabbed some lunch from a local shop, I then caught a bus back to Newton Abbot, where I was in plenty of time for my train to Plymouth, my base for the next few days. The journey was supposed to take 40 minutes, but due to points failure it was twice as long before I was arriving at the station where in May 1882, Conan Doyle arrived to set up in practice with a friend from university, George Turnavine Budd. He was greeted by an exuberant Budd in an impressive horse-drawn carriage.

 

My next port of call was to have been another cemetery, Ford Park Road Cemetery, which houses the grave of George Turnavine Budd, and his only son, William, but I decided to hold this over to the next day given that I had lost almost an hour of light.

Checking into my accommodation on the way, I made my way into central Plymouth, and Durnford Street, where Budd opened his surgery. The site of the surgery was demolished during 1958, initially being made into a car dealership called Renwick’s Garage, then into a luxury apartment block called Evolution Cove. Until 2003 the former site of the surgery was marked by a commemorative plaque. A series of twenty-two other plaques featuring quotes from the Sherlock Holmes canon can still be seen set within the footpath between 85 and 125 Durnford Street. An additional plaque is mounted within the lower step of 93 Durnford Street, but contains a number of errors – ‘A Study in Scarlet’ is called ‘A Study of Scarlet’, the number of stories is set at 68 rather than 60, and his time in Plymouth did not act as an inspiration for ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.

 

 

 

Next up was 6 Elliot Terrace, part of a row of seven imposing six-storey Victorian mansions, constructed in around 1873 by Messrs Call & Pethick. The name derives from one Colonel James Elliot who once owned most of the land upon which Plymouth Hoe now stands. Conan Doyle resided with Budd and his family at 6 Elliot Terrace following his arrival in Plymouth in early May 1882. Records indicate that Budd co-leased the property with the Royal Western Yacht Club and the nearby Grand Hotel (where Conan Doyle stayed in February 1923). There is now a commemorative plaque on the address.

Returning to my accommodation, I settled in for the night, having a strenuous day planned for the next day.

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Day 2:  ‘The Moor’

‘But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked’. 

 [HOUN – Chapter 11]

 

Day two was my day on the moor. But first, I managed to make up for missing Budd’s grave the previous day, by attending as soon as it opened at 9am  (Graveyard #2). Conan Doyle and Budd were classmates at Edinburgh and both rugby players (Budd playing for Blackheath as Watson had done). After graduating from the medical programme, Budd initially established a practice in Bristol. However, the cost of his plush lifestyle exceeded his income, leading to his moving moved to Plymouth, where things seemed to turn around for him.  In May of 1882 he sent word to Conan Doyle asking him to come and join the practice. Despite being advised by all whose advice he sought not to join Budd’s practice, he did so anyway. When the partnership was about two months old Budd told Conan Doyle there was a problem. Profits had fallen and there wasn’t really room for two doctors in the practice.  Later Doyle found out that Budd had found one of his mother’s disapproving letters about him and was upset by it.

Conan Doyle used Budd as the model for Dr. James Cullingworth in 'The Stark Munro Letters', and combined with their shared Edinburgh professor, Professor William Rutherford, as a part model for his most famous non-Sherlockian character, Professor George Challenger.

 

 

Making my way back to Plymouth Station, I caught the Dartmoor Explorer to ‘The Warren House Inn’ in Postbridge, one of the highest and most remote pubs in England. The first inn on the site is thought to date from around 1760 and stood on the opposite side of the road to the present ‘house’ and was known as the ‘New House’. That inn would have provided shelter and sustenance for miners and for travellers on the 1772 Morehamptonstead turnpike road, as did the replacement Warren House Inn (once called the Moreton Inn) in later years.

Even if Conan Doyle’s party did not then stop at the Warren House Inn, having been picked up by Fletcher Robinson’s coachman, Harry Baskerville, it certainly would have been visible to them across the valley. The landlord still guarantees a warm welcome today, declaring that the fire in the bar has been burning continuously since 1845 !

I then undertook part of a self-guided walk, ‘Tors and Tin’ planned by the Royal Geographic Society. Finding the starting point, I was soon walking across the moor, reaching a good example of a traditional Devon clapper bridge made from granite slabs taken from the surrounding landscape. 

 

Continuing on, past locations used in the 'Doctor Who' story, 'The Sontaran Experiment', I found myself at Grimspound, a late Bronze Age settlement. The Anglo Saxons knew ‘Grim’ as the Devil, and it is a prefix to placenames associated with evil legends throughout England. It also inspired the name ‘Grimpen’ in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.

Reminiscing about his trip around Dartmoor with Conan Doyle, Fletcher Robinson recalled:

‘We tramped eastward to the stone fort of Grimspound, which the savages of the Stone Age…raised with enormous labour to act as a haven of refuge from marauding tribes. The twenty feet slabs of granite – how they were ever hauled to their places is a mystery – still encircle the stone huts where the tribe lived. Into one of these Doyle and I walked….It was one of the loneliest spots in Great Britain. Strange legends of lights and figures are told concerning it.’

 

 

It was in a stone hut similar to those in Grimspound that Watson discovered the hiding place of an incognito Holmes:

 

‘Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut.

“It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,” said a well-known voice. “I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in”.’    -  Chapter 11  [HOUN]

 

Retracing my steps  I returned to the Warren House Inn, for some liquid refreshment prior to catching the Dartmoor Express, making my way to Princetown, from where Conan Doyle wrote to his mother in June 1901:

‘Dearest of Mams,

Here I am in the highest town in England. Robinson and I are exploring the moor over our Sherlock Holmes book. I think it will work out splendidly – indeed I have already done nearly half of it. Holmes is at his very best, and it is a very dramatic idea – which I owe to Robinson. We did 14 miles over the moor today and we are now pleasantly weary.’

Arthur Conan Doyle, writing to his mother from Princetown, June 1901.

 

Princetown (not the highest town in England – that’s Flash in Derbyshire by 33 feet), is where Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson took rooms at the Duchy Hotel in 1901 before their exploration of the moor. In 1941 the hotel became the Dartmoor Prison Officers’ Mess, and remained so until the early 1990s when it became, and remains, the Dartmoor National Park High Moorland Visitor Centre. In this building there is now a permanent Sherlock Holmes exhibition, including a life-size mannequin of Holmes and the Hound, and a full-size portrait of Conan-Doyle watching his famous creation going out onto the Moor, as well as other exhibits. I also purchased a 'Hound of the Baskervilles Trail' leaflet.

 

 

Nearby is Fox Tor Mires, the most likely candidate for the ‘Great Grimpen Mire’, which I visited on my last Dartmoor trip.

My final stop of the day was at Dartmoor Prison, founded in 1806. The prison was originally used to house French and American prisoners of war captured during the Naploeonic wars until 1816. The prison was re-opened in 1850 when England’s jail population was reaching a peak. On 13^th June 1901, as Conan Doyle was completing the third instalment of ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ two convicts named William Silvester and Fergus Frith made a widely publicised escape. This almost certainly inspired the escape of Selden the Notting Hill Murderer from ‘Princetown Prison’ in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. The prison now features a museum that I visited.

 

  

On my way back to the Visitors Centre, I popped into the churchyard of St. Michael’s and All Angels Church. This simple, slender-towered Dartmoor church was built between 1812-14 by prisoners captured in the Napoleonic Wars with France, and the War of 1812 with the United States – they were held at Dartmoor prison. It also features gravestones for prisoners who died during their sentence  (Graveyard #3). Unfortunately the engraved names had been eroded away, so I could not see if one of them was for Selden.

 

Catching two buses, first to Yelverton (close to the stables from ‘Silver Blaze’), and then to Plymouth, I made my way back to my room to collapse exhausted.

 

Go to Part Two

Sherlockian Sojourns #23: ‘Surely that is Baker Street’

My companion put his hand upon my shoulder and his lips close to my ear.

“Do you know where we are?” he whispered.

“Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window. [EMPT]

 

221b Baker Street is one of the most famous addresses in literature, and many letters are still received to this day asking Mr. Holmes for assistance. However, due to being full of commercial properties, Baker Street now looks so unlike how it did in Holmes’ day that television and film have had to look elsewhere for a suitable street for the exterior of Holmes and Watson’s ‘suite of rooms’. Many have dealt with this by building Baker Street in a studio, such as the Granada series’ in Manchester (whose recreation I walked during my student days), the ‘Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ set at Pinewood, and the ‘A Study in Terror’ set at Shepperton. However, several productions chose to use other London streets as filming locations. Therefore, having had a meeting in Central London for a whole morning, and needing to reduce my TOIL hours, I decided to visit as many of them as I could in an afternoon, in a gradual restarting of sojourns.

Making my way to Westminster Underground Station (which appears in ‘Sherlock: The Empty Hearse’), I walked past the church where Conan Doyle married his second wife, Jean Leckie  and the Houses of Parliament, until finally I reached Great College Street, which I walked along for a short distance, eventually reaching Barton Street, which doubled for Baker Street in two different films.

The first of these was ‘Murder By Decree’ (1979), the Holmes vs Jack the Ripper film, starring Christopher Plummer and James Mason. It was to here that Holmes and Watson returned to from the Royal Opera House at the start of the film.

 

The second was the comedic ‘Without a Clue’ (1988)  [one of my favourite Sherlockian films], which revealed Watson as the true genius of the pair. It was in Barton Street that reporters crowded Holmes, and where Reginald Kincaid was thrown out onto the street.

 

 

Photographs taken, and it was back to Westminster Underground Station, passing Deans Yard which features in the conclusion of 'Murder By Decree', and via the Jubilee and Piccadilly lines onto Holborn. Making my way to the nearby Red Lion Square, I passed the Conway Hall which appeared in ‘Mr Holmes’ (2015) as the cinema where he sees the film of a past case. 

 

But it was to the Baker Street featured in that film, Bedford Row, via Princeton Street, that I was making my way. When interviewed by ‘Radio Times’, locations manager for the film, Richard George, stated “We could turn it into 1923 London with ease. Directly opposite 221B in the movie, at number 36, a trick is played on tourists who come and see where Mr Holmes lives, in fact he’s actually watching from across the street.”

 

 

Making my way to Chancery Lane Station, I caught the Central and Northern Lines to Warren Street, where a short walk was North Gower Street, which featured as Baker Street in all series of ‘Sherlock’. Speedy’s Sandwich Shop had just closed up for the day, but I got a few photos of the outside.

 

 

Walking to the nearby Euston Square Underground Station, I caught a tube the two stops to Baker Street itself  (‘the original, one might say’). Exiting from the Marylebone Road exit, I found myself by the John Doubleday statue of Holmes.

 

 

Walking around the corner, I made my way up to the ‘Sherlock Holmes Museum’, which claims to be 221b, but is actually 237-241. Having gone round the house several times, I just briefly popped in the souvenir shop to see if they had anything new and exciting, but they did not.

 

 

Walking back down Baker Street, I passed the Lloyds Bank at 185 Baker Street. This bank has a tangential link to Holmes as on the night of 11^th September 1971, a gang tunnelled 12 metres from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault of this bank. The value of the property stolen from safety deposit boxes is unknown, but is likely to have been between £1.25 and £3 million (equivalent to between £18 and £43 million today); only £231,000 (equivalent to £3.3 million today) was recovered by the police. The burglary was planned by Anthony Gavin, a career criminal, who was inspired by John Clay’s plan in ‘The Red-Headed League’. They even wrote on the vault walls – “Let’s see how Sherlock Holmes solved this”.

A fictionalised version of the burglary is the subject of the 2008 film ‘The Bank Job’, which uses the storyline that the crime was either set up, later covered up – or more probably both – by MI5 to secure compromising photographs of Princess Margaret that were being kept in a deposit box at the bank by Trinidadian radical Michael X.

 

Continuing along Baker Street, I reached the properties identified by noted Sherlockian scholar, Bernard Davies as 221b and Camden House (the empty house) – 31 and 34 respectively.

 

Returning to Baker Street Station, I made my way home via the Jubilee and Northern Lines.

 

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ – Clandon Wood Natural Burial Site, Guildford. (British Touring Shakespeare)

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ – Clandon Wood Natural Burial Site, Guildford  (British Touring Shakespeare)

One of my favourite ever ‘HOUND’ dramatisations had taken place in a graveyard, so when Guildford Fringe announced an open-air production in the Clandon Wood Natural Burial Site presented by British Touring Shakespeare, this seemed a good first step to seeing Sherlockian performances in person rather than online. The original performance at 2pm being sold out, an additional 5.30pm performance was put on, which I managed to get a ticket for. So it was that after my Sunday lunch, I caught a train to Clandon and made my way to the Natural Burial Site, for my 52nd HOUND.  [Click here for an overview of the others]

Finding a place to put my blanket, and having scanned a QR code to get an electronic programme, I settled in for my afternoon’s entertainment. The audience was in two blocks, with a clearly defined aisle between, which within the first five minutes of the play the terrified Sir Charles Baskerville (Mark Beauchamp, who returned later as his nephew, Sir Henry) ran up screaming. It was then time for the introduction of our heroes, with Tom Thornhill’s Holmes costume being reminiscent of the Tenth Doctor with a brown inverness cape rather than an overcoat. Our narrator as ever was Watson (in the person of a bearded Stephen Purbeck Howarth). Dr. Mortimer (played by Andrew Hobbs, who also directed and co-wrote the script with his father, naval historian and author, David Hobbs MBE) then attended the Baker Street rooms, wisely summarising the legend of the Hound, and it was not until they all walked back up the aisle, and I turned my head to follow them that I realised that the collapsed body of Sir Charles was still there ready to be examined.

The story unfolded at a good pace, and with a running time of just over two hours, very little was left out from the novel. Also, unlike most productions I have seen recently there was a reasonably sized cast (6 men, 3 women), so doubling up was greatly reduced. I must make special mention of Jay Joel, whose performances as butler Barrymore and the often written-out Frankland stole the show. I also enjoyed Ben Howarth as Stapleton. Even the Musical Director, Alistair Smith, as well as playing the musical score, popped up in three minor parts. The fact that their Sir Henry had a beard required a slight rewrite, but otherwise it was all very canonical. Even a few showers of rain did not spoil the afternoon. Recommended.

This production continues to tour through August and September 2021. Click here to see future dates.

Rating:    (5/5)