The Sherlock Holmes Museum
So I went to London to visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum, however
you’ll have to forgive the quality of my photos as the weather was not fantastic and without HDR my basic phone
camera couldn’t cope, especially indoors.
The London Underground is always interesting. Each station has its own design and style.
Sherlock Holmes made up of tiny Sherlock Holmeses. There’s a close up shot of this on Flickr.
In the main foyer, the walls are adorned with these coloured tiles.
In older parts of the station, the tiles are yellow with funky lines going all over the place.
Outside the station is a statue of the great detective, unfortunately this is the best my pokey phone could do.
Many more photos of this can be found on Flickr.
One of London’s many side streets
Outside the museum a bobby in traditional dress stands guard.
Alternative shot.
This is why victorians wore belts.
We are greeted by Dr. Watson
The bullet pocks spelling out “V.R.”—Victoria Regina
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his
methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a
certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men
that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect
myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of
disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when
I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and
his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece,
then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be
distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair with
his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.
R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was
improved by it.
The Musgrave Ritual
Holme’s violin, chemical bench.
The breakfast silver
Asides the sitting room there is Sherlock Holmes’ bedroom, of which none of my photos survived, it being too dark
for my camera. Upstairs there are more rooms with various exhibits of common 19th century items and props
from various Sherlock Holmes cases.
A mannequin display of Sherlock Holmes characters.
Left, Professor Moriarty. Right, the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton being murdered.
The museum is visited by people from every corner of the globe.
Downstairs there is a gift shop which is a bit touristy, but that’s to be expected given the number of different
cultures that pass through daily. All in all, it wouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes to rush around, but it’s
advised to take your time and take lots of photographs (preferably with a decent camera, unlike me).
If you have not read the Sherlock Holmes stories before I highly recommend them and they can be read for free (as
they are in public domain), here.