221B Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes Museum
Why is it significant?
Find the narrow Georgian house with the black door, the round blue plaque that reads 221B, and the queue of people from every corner of the world waiting to climb the stairs. In the stories, Holmes asks Watson how many steps lead up to their rooms, and Watson cannot say. Seventeen, says Holmes.
Key Facts
| Place | 221B Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes Museum |
|---|---|
| Address | 221B Baker Street, London NW1 6XE, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.52380, -0.15850 |
| Part of Walk | From 221B to Wimpole Street: Sherlock Holmes, Dickens and the Beatles in Marylebone, London |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the narrow Georgian house with the black door, the round blue plaque that reads 221B, and the queue of people from every corner of the world waiting to climb the stairs. In the stories, Holmes asks Watson how many steps lead up to their rooms, and Watson cannot say. Seventeen, says Holmes. Count them when you go inside.
The address itself is a riddle. When Arthur Conan Doyle sent Holmes and Watson to live at 221B Baker Street in A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, there was no such number. Baker Street was much shorter then, and its houses stopped long before two hundred. Only in 1930, when the street was extended north and renumbered, did 221 come into existence, and it landed inside a large block of offices a little further down the road.
That block belonged to the Abbey National Building Society, and the letters soon began to arrive, addressed to Mr Sherlock Holmes: people asking him to find lost relatives, to solve thefts, to unmask unfaithful husbands, or simply to say hello. The building society did something rather wonderful. For decades it had a member of staff whose job included answering the detective's post, usually explaining, very politely, that Mr Holmes had retired to the Sussex Downs to keep bees.
Then in 1990 this museum opened at a house numbered 239, and put up a sign saying 221B. A long tug of war over the letters followed between the museum and the building society, the sort of dispute Holmes himself might have enjoyed. It only faded away when Abbey National left Baker Street in the early 2000s, and the post for Sherlock Holmes found its way to this door.
Inside, the rooms are furnished as if the great man has just stepped out: the violin, the chemistry bench, the deerstalker on the hook, the fire laid in the grate. When you have seen enough, walk back down Baker Street to the Underground station at the bottom, where the detective is waiting for you, cast in bronze.