London Museums - The Sherlock Holmes Museum

The home of Sherlock Holmes, Britain’s most famous detective, was 221b Baker Street and there’s a museum there were you can see how the great man lived and worked.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional consulting detective was meant to have lived at the address between 1881-1904 and there’s a blue plaque on the wall outside to prove it.

The museum’s at the very north end of Baker Street close to the boating entrance to Regent’s Park. If you come out of Baker Street tube and turn right, its at the top left hand side as you walk up Baker Street. It’s part of a terrace of houses that have had the bottom floors converted to shops, you’ll spot it because there are always people outside having their picture taken in front of the black 221b front door.

The ground floor of the museum is a shop selling just about anything Holmes related or anything they can put his name or profile on, so if you feel you’d look good with a pipe and a deerstalker hat this is where to get them. You can get all the books and stories here as well, even a keyring saying ‘No Shit Sherlock’ (just making that up) and when you enter there’s a young girl dressed up as Holmes’s housekeeper Mrs Hudson.

The museum itself is on the upper floors and you have to get a ticket from the cash desk at the back of the shop, a hefty £6. On the first floor is Sherlock Holmes’s study, fitted out as it would have looked in Victorian London, with his desk, armchairs, fireplace and dining table.

On the second floor are the bedrooms of Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson with displays of personal possessions and on the third floor are exhibit rooms with waxwork models of figures from the Sherlock Holmes stories.

If you’re a Holmes fan its probably worth paying to go in the museum, otherwise if you happen to be in Regents Park or at Madame Tussaud’s it’s only a short walk to 221b Baker Street to get yor picture taken outside.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is open every day except Christmas Day from 9.30am-6pm, tickets are £6 adults, £4 children, the shops on the ground floor and you can go in there for nothing. The nearest tube is Baker Street. Map