In the opening scenes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (written in Portsmouth), Holmes and Dr Watson go to view some lodgings at 221B Baker Street.
'They consisted of a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession…That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings.'
And settle they did. This address was to stay unchanged through all the many stories about Doyle’s extraordinary detective. And the sitting-room became Holmes’s laboratory and study, the centre of his investigations.
As part of the Sharing Sherlock project Portsmouth MIND group designed, built and painted their own personal version of this most famous of imaginary places, the study of Sherlock Holmes and his fellow detective, Dr Watson. To accompany their display, they selected a variety of objects on the same theme.
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Arthur and George
A joint exhibition from The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, at Portsmouth City Council, and the ITV production which starred Martin Clunes as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which first aired in March 2015.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first two Sherlock Holmes stories while living in Portsmouth where he had arrived in 1882 to set up a doctor’s practice at 1 Bush Villas, Elm Grove, Southsea
Due to his success as a writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had the opportunity to travel widely and often took his family. From Canada and America, to Australia, Ceylon and Egypt,
Best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote science fiction and had a surprising belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Since Sherlock Holmes was introduced to the public in The Study in Scarlet, first published in 1887 thousands of people have taken part in a Sherlock Holmes ‘fan’ culture.
In the summer of 1917, in leafy Cottingley Glen near Shipley in West Yorkshire, Elsie Wright aged 16, and her cousin Frances Griffiths aged 9, claimed to have taken photographs of fairies.
The students of Harbour School’s Key Stage 3 Group created fanciful masks and costumes inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s story Charles Augustus Milverton.