The Sherlock Holmes Museum

Website: http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk

I regularly pass The Sherlock Holmes Museum on the bus and today decided to pay it a visit. Located at "221b Baker Street" (but actually located at number 239 Baker Street) this museum is a busy tourist hotspot. Unfortunately, as you'll read, I was fairly disappointed with what I found...

Museum tickets are sold at the back of the ground floor shop. Available to buy are all sorts of tacky things - deer stalker hats, pipes, Victorian sweets, music boxes, London guide books, etc. I avoided these "temptations" and bought my £6 ticket/information leaflet.

The museum entrance is next door to the shop. A Victorian policeman (i.e. a young man in costume) stands by the entrance to check tickets and pose for photos. After he gave me the nod to continue I began climbing the stairs of the house, unsure what to expect. Would there be informative displays all about Arthur Conan Doyle? Perhaps a "History of Sherlock Holmes" display? How big would the museum be? I turned the corner on the stairs and glimpsed a woman dressed as a Victorian maid. Aha! So there'd be character-based re-tellings of famous Sherlock Holmes stories! Or perhaps even re-enactments? There'd surely be one famous character per room of the house! Of course. This was going to be great...

Then I arrived in the first room - Sherlock Holmes' bedroom:There were a few old pieces of furniture, a few old pictures on the wall, a pair of handcuffs on the bed... Hmmm... In hope of some information I copied the other four tourists in the room and vigorously read my information booklet. I decided I was a "Category b" visitor:

b) You know a great deal about Sherlock Holmes! You've read most of the stories, you've seen all his films on TV and you are an admirer of the famous detective. You'd like to visit his rooms to see if they are quite as you imagined.

I realised I'd pictured Sherlock Holmes' house to be a lot bigger.

In hope of finding a more museum-like experience I went next door into the study. It was just me and the Victorian maid. "Great!" I thought. "Now it's time for some history of Sherlock Holmes."
"Hi," she said.
"Hi... So this is the study is it?" I asked.
"Yes."
Hmmm... Maybe she needed some encouragement. Perhaps if I asked her some questions...
"You can take photos," she said suddenly.
"Oh... Erm. OK." Was that an order?
I snapped an obligatory photo of the room:
"Doctor Watson will be back in 20 minutes," she said.
"So there is a Doctor Watson? Is there a Sherlock Holmes?" I asked.
"Yes. But it's his day off."
"Oh..." I guess he doesn't do Sundays. "Are you supposed to be a character?" I asked.
"No."
Oh...
"I just do tea-breaks."
Oh... Well that's that.

I left the study and climbed the stairs once more. The second floor had Watson's room and Mrs Hudson's room. The rooms on the third floor contained life-sized wax figures from Sherlock Holmes stories. There was a variety of murderers and blackmailers on show and it was sometimes hard to tell the wax figures from the slowly moving tourists. Over in the corner stood Watson and Holmes:
The second and third floors were good fun since, as well as the wax figures, there were props and snippets from stories dotted around the rooms. It was fun to read these and remember the cases that Sherlock Holmes had solved. It was also interesting to discover that Sherlock Holmes receives enormous numbers of letters from around the world. Some of these letters were on display - including one from a young girl requesting help with the mystery of where her cat goes every night.

The museum layout leads you finally into a small cramped toilet room at the top of the house - a fitting anticlimax. By the time I returned downstairs to the study I was hoping Doctor Watson would be there. There was no sign of him and instead I found three women talking to the Victorian maid. She was telling them she was a film student who lived in the East End - how authentic.

Weighing up whether or not I should wait for Watson I decided to cut my loses and leave.

Summary: It looks fun and authentic on the outside but there's not much content. Not worth a visit even if you're a die-hard fan.