Sherlock Holmes visits Kent! – and we receive a Victorian geography lesson penned in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s glorious descriptive prose.
‘We wonder whether the Cray Wanderers players and supporters, waiting one Saturday evening on the platform of a suburban Surrey railway station, might have espied through the gas-lit shadows Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson speeding away by train, summoned to investigate a diabolical mystery at a countryside house?’
In our Wandering Through the Crays social history book (2015) we allowed ourselves a flight of fancy when we suggested a sighting of fictional legends Holmes and Watson by players and supporters of our local football team. But it was true that in 1897 Cray Wanderers joined the Southern Suburban League. This was additional to competing in the Kent League. Their new westward journeys along the growing network of railways in Victorian south London included destinations such as Anerley, Croydon, Norwood, Wandsworth and Westminster.
Sherlock Holmes made many excursions from his central London base at 221B Baker Street. He visited Kent in one of the earliest of the stories. Let’s delve a little deeper into The Man with the Twisted Lip, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in The Strand magazine in 1891.
‘We wonder whether the Cray Wanderers players and supporters, waiting one Saturday evening on the platform of a suburban Surrey railway station, might have espied through the gas-lit shadows Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson speeding away by train, summoned to investigate a diabolical mystery at a countryside house?’
In our Wandering Through the Crays social history book (2015) we allowed ourselves a flight of fancy when we suggested a sighting of fictional legends Holmes and Watson by players and supporters of our local football team. But it was true that in 1897 Cray Wanderers joined the Southern Suburban League. This was additional to competing in the Kent League. Their new westward journeys along the growing network of railways in Victorian south London included destinations such as Anerley, Croydon, Norwood, Wandsworth and Westminster.
Sherlock Holmes made many excursions from his central London base at 221B Baker Street. He visited Kent in one of the earliest of the stories. Let’s delve a little deeper into The Man with the Twisted Lip, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in The Strand magazine in 1891.
Watson journeys out one evening in June 1889 to help find a man who has been missing for forty-eight hours. His wife fears that he has taken himself to an opium den. Watson’s destination is a remarkable one: ‘A vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge.’ We must bear in mind that Tower Bridge wasn’t built until 1894 so it assuredly could be as far east as Limehouse that the opium den is situated ‘between a slop shop and a gin shop’.
Already at this early stage of the adventure there comes a dramatic twist! – for who should Watson discover in ‘the long low room thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke’ but Sherlock Holmes himself! Holmes explains his mission there and persuades Watson to accompany him to ‘Lee, in Kent.’
I must pause here to praise the wonderful descriptive quality of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. The literary merit of crime fiction is often underrated. Conan Doyle vividly ignites our senses with the mention of Danes, Lascars and Malays populating the narrow lanes and sinister quarters ‘among the dregs of the docks’. Then as he and Watson start their journey Holmes announces: ‘We have a seven-mile drive before us. He whistled shrilly, a signal which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of a horse’s hooves. A tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels from its side-lanterns.’
We modern-day readers are given another reminder that there was no Tower Bridge to cross the Thames in 1889. ‘He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us.’ Then after Holmes and Watson ‘were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban villas’ Holmes declares to his companion: ‘We are on the outskirts of Lee. We have touched on three English counties, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey and ending in Kent.’
There is some more Victorian geography for us to consider there. Tower Bridge would today provide a shorter more direct conduit into Kent when journeying from Limehouse to Lee. Having to tack further west and use London Bridge or Waterloo Bridge to cross the Thames the route for Holmes and Watson would indeed have involved Middlesex (i.e. the City of London) then a corner of Surrey before entering into Kent.
Holmes and Watson arrive at The Cedars near Lee and are welcomed by the wife of a husband who commutes to London by train every morning returning by the 5.14 from Cannon Street every night. Let us again enjoy Conan Doyle’s descriptive flair? ‘The door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline-de-soie with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at the neck and wrists.’
Information:
Sidney Paget (SP) drew the wonderful illustrations for he original published Sherlock Holmes.
A slop shop sold cheaply-made clothing.
Lee Railway station opened in 1866.
Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015) a social history of St Mary Cray can be purchased at the Croft Tea Room or by e-mail [email protected]
Already at this early stage of the adventure there comes a dramatic twist! – for who should Watson discover in ‘the long low room thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke’ but Sherlock Holmes himself! Holmes explains his mission there and persuades Watson to accompany him to ‘Lee, in Kent.’
I must pause here to praise the wonderful descriptive quality of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. The literary merit of crime fiction is often underrated. Conan Doyle vividly ignites our senses with the mention of Danes, Lascars and Malays populating the narrow lanes and sinister quarters ‘among the dregs of the docks’. Then as he and Watson start their journey Holmes announces: ‘We have a seven-mile drive before us. He whistled shrilly, a signal which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of a horse’s hooves. A tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels from its side-lanterns.’
We modern-day readers are given another reminder that there was no Tower Bridge to cross the Thames in 1889. ‘He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us.’ Then after Holmes and Watson ‘were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban villas’ Holmes declares to his companion: ‘We are on the outskirts of Lee. We have touched on three English counties, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey and ending in Kent.’
There is some more Victorian geography for us to consider there. Tower Bridge would today provide a shorter more direct conduit into Kent when journeying from Limehouse to Lee. Having to tack further west and use London Bridge or Waterloo Bridge to cross the Thames the route for Holmes and Watson would indeed have involved Middlesex (i.e. the City of London) then a corner of Surrey before entering into Kent.
Holmes and Watson arrive at The Cedars near Lee and are welcomed by the wife of a husband who commutes to London by train every morning returning by the 5.14 from Cannon Street every night. Let us again enjoy Conan Doyle’s descriptive flair? ‘The door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline-de-soie with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at the neck and wrists.’
Information:
Sidney Paget (SP) drew the wonderful illustrations for he original published Sherlock Holmes.
A slop shop sold cheaply-made clothing.
Lee Railway station opened in 1866.
Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015) a social history of St Mary Cray can be purchased at the Croft Tea Room or by e-mail [email protected]