A statue of Sherlock Holmes by the sculptor
John Doubleday stands near the supposed site of
221B Baker Street
221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the United Kingdom, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter may indicate a separate address within ...
, the fictional detective's address in London. Unveiled on 23 September 1999, the sculpture was funded by the
Abbey National
The Abbey National Building Society was formed in 1944 by the merger of the Abbey Road and the National building societies.
It was the first building society in the United Kingdom to demutualise, doing so in July 1989. The bank expanded throu ...
building society
A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization. Building societies offer banking and related financial services, especially savings and mortgage lending. Building societies exist in the United Kingdo ...
, whose headquarters were on the purported site of the famous address. As no site was available on
Baker Street
Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. It is named after builder William Baker, who laid out the street in the 18th century. The street is most famous for its connection to the fictional detec ...
itself the statue was installed outside
Baker Street tube station, on
Marylebone Road
Marylebone Road ( ) is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east–west from the Euston Road at Regent's Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington. The road which runs in three lanes in both direction ...
. Doubleday had previously produced a statue of Holmes for the town of
Meiringen in Switzerland, below the
Reichenbach Falls
The Reichenbach Falls (german: Reichenbachfälle) are a waterfall cascade of seven steps on the stream called Rychenbach in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. They drop over a total height of about . At , the upper falls, known as the ...
whence the detective fell to his apparent death in the 1893 story "
The Final Problem
"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in ''The Strand Magazine'' in the United Kingdom, and ''McClure's'' in the United States, under the title " ...
".
Description
The statue depicts Holmes wearing an
Inverness cape
The Inverness cape is a form of weatherproof outer-coat. It is notable for being sleeveless, the arms emerging from armholes beneath a cape. It has become associated with the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
History
The garment began in ...
and a
deerstalker, attributes first given to him by
Sidney Paget
Sidney Edward Paget () (4 October 1860 – 28 January 1908) was a British artist of the Victorian era, best known for his illustrations that accompanied Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in ''The Strand Magazine''.
Life
Sidne ...
, the illustrator of
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...
's stories for ''
The Strand Magazine'',
and holding a
calabash pipe
A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises a chamber (the bowl) for the tobacco from which a thin hollow stem (shank) emerges, ending in a mouthpiece. Pipes can range from very simp ...
(which appears to be a later addition). It is located outside
Baker Street tube station on Marylebone Road, near both the detective's fictional home at 221B Baker Street and the
Sherlock Holmes Museum
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a privately run museum in London, England, dedicated to the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It is the world's first museum dedicated to the literary character Sherlock Holmes. It opened in 1990 and is ...
between numbers 237 and 241.
History
In 1927
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, ''Time'' observed: "Wh ...
was the first person to suggest that a statue of Holmes be sited in London, but his efforts came to nothing.
A new campaign was begun by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London in 1996.
Before then the society had, according to its president Anthony Howlett, spent "a decade or two debating whether we should put a statue smack in the middle of Baker Street, and the traffic be damned".
The Sherlock Holmes Statue Company Limited was set up to manage the project. In 1998, Abbey National agreed to fund the statue because of their connection with Holmes. (Their headquarters were at 215−229 Baker Street and they employed a member of staff to respond to any letters addressed to Holmes at 221B.)
John Doubleday, the sculptor of the first statue of Holmes at Meiringen, was given the commission for the London statue on 31 March 1998.
[ After the plans to install the statue were announced some local residents and the St Marylebone Society spoke out against the work, saying that it was "not very appropriate. It should have been in Baker Street itself, which is much quieter."][ The statue was unveiled by ]Lord Tugendhat
Christopher Samuel Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat (born 23 February 1937) is a British Conservative Party politician, businessman, company director, journalist and author. He was a Member of Parliament from 1970 to 1977, then a member of the Euro ...
, the chairman of Abbey National, on 23 September 1999.[
Since 2014, Doubleday's sculpture has been one of a series of "]Talking Statues
Talking may refer to:
* Speech, the product of the action of ''to talk''
* Communication by spoken words; conversation or discussion
Other uses
* "Talking" (The Rifles song), 2007
* "Talking" (A Flock of Seagulls song), 1983
* "Talking", a son ...
" across London where passers-by can receive a simulated telephone call from the statue's subject by scanning a QR code
A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about th ...
or visiting a link. The Holmes statue is voiced by the actor Ed Stoppard with a script written by the English novelist Anthony Horowitz which humorously gives details relating to the statue's appearance.
Other statues of Sherlock Holmes
Before London received its statue of Sherlock Holmes examples had already been installed in 1988 in Meiringen, also in 1988 in Karuizawa
is a resort town located in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 20,323 in 9897 households, and a population density of 130 persons per km². The total area of the town is . Karuizawa is one of the oldest and most ...
(Japan) and in 1991 on the site of Conan-Doyle's birthplace in Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
. In 2007, a statue of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson was erected in Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
near the British embassy.
References
{{Portal bar, Literature, London, Visual arts
1999 sculptures
Bronze sculptures in the City of Westminster
Buildings and structures completed in 1999
Monuments and memorials in London
Outdoor sculptures in London
Holmes, Sherlock
Sherlock Holmes
Holmes, Sherlock
Statues of fictional characters
1999 establishments in England