SHERLOCK HOLMES

SHERLOCK HOLMES - A LITERARY LONDON PUB

On Friday, to celebrate Howard’s birthday, Jon-Jon and I met him at the BBC Club before moving on to two Greene King pubs: Finery and Sherlock Holmes.

The Sherlock Holmes is a theme pub based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective?Sherlock Holmes.?It was originally a hotel and under the name the ‘Northumberland Arms’ it appears in Sherlock Holmes’ The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. While, under the name the ‘Northumberland Hotel’ it may have appeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

On our arrival, the pub was rammed so we sat outside. Howard smoked a cigar and drank Aspall. Jon-Jon and I were on Amstel.

It was too cold so we went inside and were lucky to get seats under a box containing a depiction of the head of Toby - the dog Holmes often called upon to follow scent trails. Toby is described by?John Watson?as a ‘ugly long haired, lop-eared creature, half spaniel and half lurcher, brown and white in colour, with a very clumsy waddling gait’ in The Sign of the Four.

The pub contains a large collection of?Sherlock Holmes memorabilia, including in the gents. Upstairs is a recreation of Holmes’s study at 221b Baker Street, built for Festival of Britain in 1951 (Pathe News amusingly describe the recreation). An old Basil Rathbone era Sherlock Holmes movie was playing on the TV screens, with the sound off. It was a nice touch to even have the gaming machine Sherlock Holmes themed!

Across the road from the pub is Great Scotland Yard, the former headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, which Holmes referred to simply as Scotland Yard. The street was used as the entrance to the Ministry of Magic in?the Harry Potter?films and is home to the Civil Service Club.

As we were hungry, it is Elementary, my dear Watson, we dined at the Civil Service Club.

Sherlock Holmes, 10 Northumberland Street, Charing Cross, WC2N 5DB

Wikipedia: The Sherlock Holmes

If you liked this article,?there are other London literary pubs listed here.