A community of interest museum. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in London

The Sherlock Holmes Museums in London was founded in 1990 and was the first museum to be dedicated to a fictional character. It is located at 221B Baker Street, the address Sherlock Holmes in the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The museum is furbished with Victorian furniture, to create the illusion that the visitors actually enter the historic home of Sherlock and Watson. The reconstruction isn’t in any way trying to be a hundred percent authentic. At the ground floor, the museum shop already reminds visitors that they are visiting a museum.

A traditional English Bobby checks the tickets at the entrance. In the apartment at the first floor an aged Sherlock welcomes the crowd into the small living room. The entire first floor is packed with references to the stories of Sherlock and Watson. In Victorian cabinets, on the wall and on the coffee table memorabilia of the adventures are put on display.

It seems like Sherlock himself has saved all the knives, letters, pistols and other items from his profession as a detective, and has put them on display in his living room, labelling them as an antiquarian. In this room, the real life historic reconstruction is combined with references to the novels. For example, on one of the shelves there are two busts of Napoleon, one in tact and one broken, referring to the story The adventures of the Six Napoleons, where a man mysteriously destroys busts of Napoleon.

But not all the object refer to the original stories, some of the iconic pop culture references are also present here. For example, visitors can get their photographs taken, sitting in Sherlock’s armchair, smoking his pipe, wearing his typical deerstalker. But the deerstalker is never mentioned in the original stories, nor is his typical pipe. The mixture of objects referring to the original stories and the later pop culture references are combined with reminders of the fictional nature of the characters. In Watson’s room, the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle are displayed on his bookshelves in several re-editions. Despite these references, the illusion of the historic reconstruction is never really broken. The whole house baths in a Victorian atmosphere, which is enough to create the illusion of the past. The whole of the second floor is reserved for iconic scenes out of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Mannequin dolls dressed up as the most known characters of the novels, like Moriarty and Irene Adler, are used to portray some iconic scenes.

The head of the hound of the Baskervilles hangs on the wall. Coming up the stairs, visitors whisper enthusiastically, “Look! The hound of the Baskervilles.” For the Sherlock Holmes fan, the museum is packed with references they can relate to. Without any prior knowledge about Holmes and Watson, a visitor would have an entirely different experience. There is not one panel explaining the history behind the fictional characters, or narrating the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. You have to be able to 'read’ the signs in the museum to know to what it refers to. Only members of the Sherlock Holmes community of interest understand all the references and objects in the Sherlock Holmes Museum. When I visited the museum I was accompanied by a real Holmes Fan, who could guide me through the museum, narrating the stories of Sherlock and his companion Holmes. This illustrates how new communities can make a strong group, based on their common interest for a particular heritage.