Baker Street is one of the original
stations of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground line. It opened on
10 January 1863.
Sherlock Holmes museum (12):
Sherlock Holmes statue (13):
2, Upper Wimpole Street
(15):
In
this house the remarkable Arthur Conan Doyle opened his ophthalmic practice in 1891. Although he
is usually referred to as Conan Doyle, Conan is his middle name. As a qualified
physician he believed vaccination should be compulsory.
Conan Doyle was also an accomplished all-round sportsman and played ten
matches for the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club, see below) as a batsman and
occasional bowler. He only took one first class wicket – that of the legendary
W G Grace.
He
was hugely interested in the paranormal and firmly believed his friend Harry
Houdini had supernatural powers despite the fact Houdini himself insisted all
his tricks were illusions.
220 Baker Street, (until
recently) Transport for London Lost Property Office (16):
It’s said that at some time or another every journalist in London will
have done a piece on the Transport for London Lost Property Office. So here’s
my effort, even though it’s moved beyond the Monopoly Board …. From 1933 to 2020, the staff played detective here, aided by their
computer system appropriately named Sherlock.
There were three storeys under Baker Street but bigger premises
were still needed and they moved to South Kensington.
Over 900 lost items are handed in every day. Only Tokyo has more -
10,000 appx per day. The Japanese are very honest but also, unlike London,
the finder gets a reward for a claimed item or otherwise it’s “finders
keepers”.
After three months unclaimed items in London are either destroyed,
recycled, sold or donated to charity. Only around 25% of items are reclaimed
but this figure is skewed somewhat because only 2% of the 10,000 lost umbrellas
are reunited with their owners. Sometimes, on rainy days, staff from the office
could be found outside Baker Street Tube handing them out.
After
Travelcards, mobile phones (right) are the most frequent items handed in. Every
morning there’s a dawn chorus of alarms. They can identify your lost phone if
you provide the IMEI number (type *#06# to find out what it is).
On October 30, 2023, exactly 90 years after it was founded, the TFL lost property office will be located at a new site next to West Ham Bus Garage.
Chiltern Court (17):
Chiltern Court, comprising 180 apartments, stands above Baker Street
Tube Station, and has provided Des Res homes for the rich and famous since
1929. During World War II Chiltern Court was where the Norwegian resistance and
British Special Operations Executive made plans to slow German development of
nuclear weapons by sabotaging the heavy water production plant at Telemark. In
February 1943, the plant was destroyed by a combination of SOE-trained
Norwegian commandos and Allied bombing. Norwegian resistance forces then sank a
ferry attempting to move the remaining heavy water to Germany.
A two-bed flat in Chiltern Court won’t leave much change from £1 million. I’m
wondering if there’s any vibration from the five tube lines below, especially
the Metropolitan which isn’t far below the surface having been constructed by
cut-and-cover rather than tunnelling.
Gerry Rafferty wrote his mega-hit Baker Street whilst living nearby in a
friend’s flat. It wasn’t anywhere near as grand as Chiltern Court. The saxophone
was played by Raphael Ravenscroft and not TV presenter Bob Holness, a
much-repeated spoof created in the 1980’s by Stuart Maconie.
Dorset
Square (18):
In 1787 Sir Thomas Lord opened his first
cricket ground in what is now Dorset Square and the Marylebone Cricket Club was
founded. The MCC later moved to Lord’s in St John’s Wood, widely referred to as
The Home of Cricket. There was briefly a third Lords between these two but it
was abandoned when they dug the Regent’s Canal through the outfield. So the
Dorset Square turf was moved twice.
105A Crawford St (19)
Established in 1814, Meacher, Higgins and
Thomas is the oldest pharmacy in London. I checked and they don’t sell
photographic chemicals any more. I still remember the smell of developer and
fixer from the time my bedroom doubled up as a darkroom. It was regularly used
by my housemates to print photos too risqué to be sent to the chemists.
146 Harley Street (20):
146 Harley Street is where Lionel Logue
helped King George VI overcome his stammer. Logue was played by Geoffrey Rush
in The King’s Speech.
90 Harley Street (21):
The original ‘Nightingale’ hospital stood
on this site although it wasn’t called that until 2012. Back in the day Florence was superintendent of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen. It
was a nursing home to provide treatment for ‘educated women of moderate means
who were temporarily ill but too poor to afford private medical care and too
refined to be admitted to a public hospital’. It now houses a variety of
private medical practices.
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