Explore the real-world places that appear in The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include 221B Baker Street, Camden House (The Empty House), Park Lane (Ronald Adair's Home), Scotland Yard (Great Scotland Yard), Charles Augustus Milverton's Hampstead House (Appledore Towers) and 8 more.
Baker Street — Holmes and Watson's rooms
Holmes and Watson's sitting room is the hub of the collection. In The Empty House, Holmes returns from his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls, and Watson faints at the sight of him. Colonel Sebastian Moran fires an air-gun at a wax bust of Holmes in the window, which Mrs. Hudson has moved to fool him. In The Priory School, The Dancing Men and others, clients such as Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable and Hilton Cubitt arrive here with their troubles.
Baker Street was laid out in the late 18th century and was a respectable residential street in Victorian times. The number 221B did not exist in Doyle's day, since the street numbers did not reach that high. The street was later renumbered and extended.
The Sherlock Holmes Museum occupies a Georgian house at 221b Baker Street and re-creates the rooms as Doyle described them. It is a popular attraction, with costumed staff and a gift shop.
Visit: The Sherlock Holmes Museum (museum)
Baker Street area — Moran's ambush site opposite 221B
In The Empty House, Holmes and Watson sneak into the vacant house across from 221B and wait in the dark. Colonel Sebastian Moran, the late Professor Moriarty's lieutenant, arrives with his air-gun to shoot the wax dummy of Holmes. Holmes tackles him, and Inspector Lestrade arrests him for the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair.
Doyle's Camden House is fictional and placed across from 221B. The surrounding blocks of Marylebone were built up with terraced houses in the 18th and 19th centuries and saw heavy redevelopment later.
There is no real Camden House. The streets around Baker Street are now lined with offices, shops and flats, and the area is busy with tourists headed for the Holmes museum.
426 Park Lane — The murder in a locked room
The Honourable Ronald Adair is found shot dead in his locked upstairs room at 427 Park Lane, killed by an expanding revolver bullet. He had been playing cards at the Bagatelle Club and had won a large sum from Colonel Sebastian Moran, though no cause was apparent. Holmes solves the case by showing that Moran shot him from the empty house opposite with an air-gun, to silence him over card cheating.
Park Lane is on the eastern edge of Hyde Park and was a street of aristocratic mansions in the Victorian era. Many grand houses were replaced by luxury hotels from the 1930s onward.
Park Lane is now a major road lined with luxury hotels such as the Dorchester and Grosvenor House. Hyde Park beside it is open to everyone.
Visit: Hyde Park (park)
Whitehall — Home of Inspector Lestrade
Inspector Lestrade and Inspector Stanley Hopkins, who appear in several stories, work from Scotland Yard. In The Norwood Builder, Lestrade is certain that John Hector McFarlane killed Jonas Oldacre and builds a firm case on a bloody thumbprint. Holmes overturns it by showing that the thumbprint was planted by Oldacre himself. In The Abbey Grange, Hopkins brings the case of Sir Eustace Brackenstall's death to Holmes.
The Metropolitan Police were based at Great Scotland Yard from 1829 until 1890, when they moved to New Scotland Yard on the Embankment. The name became shorthand for the force itself.
Great Scotland Yard is now a street near Whitehall, with a hotel on the site of the old police buildings. The Metropolitan Police are headquartered at Broadway.
Hampstead — The blackmailer's lair
In Charles Augustus Milverton, Holmes and Watson disguise themselves as burglars and break into Appledore Towers in Hampstead to recover letters belonging to Lady Eva Blackwell. While hiding in the study, they witness a veiled woman shoot Milverton dead. Holmes and Watson take the blackmailer's papers and burn them in the fire, and flee. Holmes tells Lestrade that he cannot identify the murderess, to whom he sympathises.
Hampstead was a hilltop village on the northern edge of London that became fashionable for large villas in the 19th century. Doyle's Appledore Towers is invented.
Hampstead remains an affluent suburb with Georgian streets, with Hampstead Heath nearby as a public park. Visitors can walk on the heath and enjoy the views over London.
Visit: Hampstead Heath (park)
Lower Norwood — Jonas Oldacre's home
Jonas Oldacre, a builder, supposedly dies in a fire at Deep Dene House, and his young solicitor John Hector McFarlane is accused of murder. Holmes finds that Oldacre faked his own death to ruin McFarlane, whose mother had once refused him. Holmes smokes him out of a hidden space in the house by making him think the house is on fire, and the cowardly builder appears.
Norwood was a leafy suburb of south London that grew after the Crystal Palace was rebuilt at Sydenham in 1854. It had many new villas for the middle classes.
Norwood is a residential area of south London, with Crystal Palace Park nearby. The park features Victorian dinosaur sculptures and is open to the public.
Visit: Crystal Palace Park (park)
Kensington — Where Holmes meets Watson
Watson is living in Kensington, bereaved by the death of his wife Mary, when Holmes reappears in The Empty House. He disguises himself as an old book collector and visits Watson's rooms, then reveals his identity. Watson faints. Holmes explains that he survived the fall at Reichenbach Falls and spent two years travelling, including in Tibet, before returning to catch Moran.
Kensington was a respectable residential district, with large Victorian terraces. It was home to many doctors and professionals in the late 19th century.
Kensington is now an affluent area with museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.
Visit: Natural History Museum (museum)
Kent — The Golden Pince-Nez case
In The Golden Pince-Nez, Professor Coram's secretary Willoughby Smith is found stabbed at Yoxley Old Place with a golden pince-nez clutched in his hand. Holmes deduces from the lenses that the owner is a short-sighted woman with a thick nose. The culprit is Anna, a Russian revolutionary who hid in the professor's bedroom and killed Smith when he found her.
Chatham in Kent was a major naval dockyard town, and the surrounding countryside had country houses. Yoxley Old Place itself is fictional.
Chatham Historic Dockyard is a major heritage attraction with preserved ships and buildings on the Medway.
Visit: Chatham Historic Dockyard (museum)
Fortescue Scholarship exam — St. Luke's College
In The Three Students, Holmes is at a university town when Hilton Soames finds that someone has copied the proofs of the Fortescue Scholarship Greek exam. Three students are suspects: Gilchrist, Daulat Ras and Miles McLaren. Holmes finds that Gilchrist, the athlete, had looked at the proofs, and he confesses and withdraws from the exam.
Doyle placed the story at a fictional St. Luke's College, in a university town often taken as Oxford or Cambridge. The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and has many historic colleges.
Cambridge is a university city, and visitors can tour several colleges and walk along the River Cam.
Visit: King's College, Cambridge (landmark)
Surrey — Violet Smith's lonely ride
Violet Smith, a young music teacher, tells Holmes that a bearded cyclist follows her on her weekly ride from Chiltern Grange to Farnham station. Holmes and Watson investigate and find that Jack Woodley and Bob Carruthers are tied to an inheritance she is due to receive from her uncle. Woodley tries to force her to marry him, and Carruthers, who loves her, thrashes him.
Farnham is a market town in Surrey that was fashionable in the Victorian age. The heathland around it was popular for walking and cycling, which boomed in the 1890s.
Farnham is a historic town with Georgian architecture and Farnham Castle. The surrounding Surrey Hills offer walking and cycling trails.
Visit: Farnham Castle (historic site)
Derbyshire — The missing young Lord Saltire
Dr. Huxtable's preparatory school loses ten-year-old Lord Saltire, the Duke of Holdernesse's heir, and the German master Heidegger. Holmes and Watson track them across the Peak District moors, using bicycle tyre prints and a cow-shoe trick. They discover that the Duke's secretary, James Wilder, his illegitimate son, has orchestrated the kidnapping, and the Duke pays Holmes a large sum.
The Peak District in Derbyshire became Britain's first national park in 1951. Its moors, dales and country houses such as Chatsworth appear across Victorian fiction.
Chatsworth House and the Peak District National Park draw many visitors to the area each year.
Visit: Chatsworth House (historic site)
Kent — Lady Brackenstall's house
Sir Eustace Brackenstall is found dead at the Abbey Grange, and his wife, Lady Mary, says that burglars bound her to a chair. Holmes sees that the scene was staged, since the bell-rope was too high to have been pulled down by a burglar and the wine glasses were wrong. The killer is Captain Jack Croker, who loves Lady Mary, and Holmes lets him go, convening a private jury.
Chislehurst in Kent was a country village on London's edge, known for its common and Chislehurst Caves. It became a commuter suburb after the railway arrived in 1865.
Chislehurst is a leafy suburb of south-east London with a large common. The Chislehurst Caves offer guided tours.
Visit: Chislehurst Caves (tour)
Whitehall — Lord Bellinger and Trelawney Hope
In The Second Stain, Lord Bellinger, the Prime Minister, and Trelawney Hope, the European Secretary, ask Holmes to recover a stolen letter from a foreign potentate that could cause a European war. It vanished from a locked dispatch box in Hope's house at Whitehall Terrace. Holmes learns that Hope's wife Lady Hilda took it to protect herself from blackmail, and he finds it hidden beneath the floor.
Whitehall has been the centre of British government since the 19th century, with ministries and offices along the street. It runs from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square.
The Cabinet War Rooms, now Churchill War Rooms, are open to visitors near Whitehall. Downing Street is behind gates.
Visit: Churchill War Rooms (museum)
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