London Public Houses (10)

The Sherlock Holmes

10 - 11 Northumberland Street, Westminster, London WC2N 5DB

Tel: 020 7930 2644   Fax: 020 7839 0263

"This pub is a homage to the world's greatest detective and his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. But why here? It's nowhere near 221b Baker Street, which must be a disappointment to many a tourist. There is a connection though, Holmes met with Sir Henry Baskerville in the Northumberland Hotel which was opposite the pub and it apparently had a Turkish Bath which Holmes and Watson both used.

In the bars on the ground floor are displays of Holmes's artefacts and possessions, highlighting his skills and interests and cases he has solved. It's all wonderfully serious and strangely camp. On a television screen above one of the entrances, old series of the famous, opium loving sleuth, play in silence. More camp. 

The best is yet to come. In a corner of the restaurant upstairs is a life size reconstruction of Holmes's study, complete with ghostly mannequin, a hole in its head made buy Moran's bullet in a failed murder attempt. This is the entire collection of an exhibition displayed at the Festival of Britain in 1951, after which it went on tour and was eventually bought by Whitbread in 1957 and housed in the Northumberland Arms, renamed the Sherlock Holmes."