Save Undershaw! Leave your feedback here…

This is such a beautiful piece of English history, and it needs to be preserved. i wish everyone here luck from the states.

Undershaw House is an extremely important part of our history, celebrating the life of one of the most famous and well-loved Authors in history- How can anyone ever think of destroying it? It has to be saved at all costs!

This old mansion deserves preservation. It is just as important as other famous dwellings such as Chawton Cottage and Osborne House. I’m sixteen, live in the U.S., have read all the stories, and would love to tour this place in the future.

I’ve been alerted to your campaign simply by reading “Arthur and George” by Julian Barnes. I fully support your vision of Undershaw as a fantastic visitor attraction, and am sorry to see it in its current state.

I’m not overly creative. I don’t have any useful contacts. I don’t even have an obscene amount of money stashed away to buy a run down house in Surrey. On the whole, I’m rather useless when it comes to help with the preservation of Undershaw. But I do have an opinion on why the former home of Arthur Conan Doyle should be preserved. This is it:

First of all – I am a Sherlock Holmes fan. Have been since the tender age of twelve.

By then I had read my way through the small annex containing children’s books and was about to be allowed entrance into the huge (I was twelve – everything was huge…) library proper, full of wondrous grown up books. Inside, the librarian picked out a musty book with a dark blue cover, handed it to me, and told me to please go away. So with a rather shabby copy of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” I skipped off home to hide in my room and take my first journey into “real” literature. Or at least literature without talking animals, starving orphans, or the Famous Five taking a holiday somewhere or other.

The book had me hooked from the first page (or rather the 200th or so page since my twelve year persona apparently found “The Speckled Band” a more appetizing title than “A Scandal in Bohemia”. No, I don’t know either.) and I spent the rest of that year reading and rereading (I was a very thorough child) each and every Sherlock Holmes book the local library had to offer. Even if I’m a little shaky on the storylines today, I can still remember the thrilled fascination I felt as I joined in John Watson’s admiration of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.

On a less Sherlockian note, twelve was also the age I discovered The Beatles. Paul McCartney was the most desirable man on the planet – age difference be damned – and Liverpool was the capital of my eager little preteen heart. Not that I ever expected to see it – for a twelve year old girl living in a small town in the north of Sweden, England was about as fictional as Narnia, only slightly less likely to appear in my wardrobe.

And then I grew older. And older. And… nevermind. But suddenly England wasn’t so far away anymore. So I went to London on vacation (because I’m a Swede, and that’s what Swedes do), and I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and I shopped at the Beatles Store, and I took the Sherlock Holmes walk, and I took the In My Life walk, and I returned to my hotel room to soothe my complaining feet in front of an unexpected episode of Granada’s brilliant Sherlock Holmes series. And it was all marvellous! But…

When I returned to Sweden I didn’t feel closer to my childhood’s Sherlock. Or The Beatles for that matter. I had visited 221b Baker Street, but it wasn’t the “real” 221b. (Don’t get me wrong, I love the Sherlock Holmes Museum and I keep returning to it – but it opened about sixty years after Conan Doyle’s death, and in a house I doubt he’d ever given a second glance.)

Now, I had also stood outside both No 2 Devonshire Place and No 2 Upper Wimpole Street picturing Conan Doyle inside either of these walls, writing away while waiting for his next patient, and it had had me all but itching to be allowed inside. I was sure that somewhere in there, there would be a feeling of being part of the whole creative process, of being connected to Conan Doyle and the whole Sherlock Holmes canon.

I tested this “Theory of Connection” a couple of months ago when I finally found myself eye to eye with the town of my dreams. I spent three days in Liverpool, taking every kind of Beatles related tour there was – including the National Trust’s tour of Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road.

To walk through the actual houses where John and Paul had spent much of their adolescence was… well, I was pretty much left a wide eyed, trembling collection of emotions.

And this is why Undershaw needs to be preserved. Because the feeling of walking through a place still looking like it did when the object of your awe and admiration lived there… it’s humbling and exciting and wonderful and intense, and you come away wanting to do… something. Anything. Somehow make a difference in the world. And I think both Conan Doyle and the sadly neglected Undershaw deserve to inspire this in people.

So even if The Undershaw Preservation Trust’s vision of the self supporting Sherlock Holmes/Conan Doyle museum won’t come to fruition in the next decade or two, at least it would be wonderful to know that someday it could. That somewhere in the future, some other Sherlock Holmes fan could take his or her inner geek for a spin in the undamaged house where Conan Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes. And that maybe I could too.

This is a place of British literary history – housing the man, his imagination, creativity and many influences that have enriched our literary (and subsequently dramatic) heritage. It deserves securing for current and future generations interested in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his contribution to our culture. Baker Street, London boasts a real museum even though this address and its inhabitants were both fictional(!) and it is visited by people from all over the world, thus contributing to London’s tourism economy. With this in mind, the actual and potential value of Undershaw House to the tourism economy of Surrey and North Hampshire should not be underestimated.

I happened to come across your ‘flier’ in The Petersfield Bookshop today and had, coincidentally, been wondering about Undershaw House and its future whenever driving through/past Hindhead. Given that major financing is a pre-requisite for this worthy cause, have you contacted Guy Ritchie or Warner Brothers for support, publicity and/or financial help?!

For its literary associations alone this house should be preserved, restored and opened to members of the public. But in addition to that, it is of an age and architectural style which adds to our knowledge of the times, and it would be a valuable asset to students of social history.

Save Undershaw and save generations of inspiration

I can´t believe this is happening. Especially in the UK. Panama, where I live, sure. The laws over here just exist on paper. Hopefully there will be a way to restore this house and turn it into a museum to celebrate Doyle´s life and work.

Elio

Conan Doyle’s stories have and will always be deeply loved by so many people. The fictional characters that he created have inspired so many people and lead to so many other wonderful things. Please save Undershaw, it is a wonderful place that would be terribly missed.

Please, save Undershaw!
Thank you for making this campaign, best luck from Spain.

It’s great to see so many comments here! It really shows how much support Undershaw has. Best wishes from Sweden!

Such a quintessential British author’s home as this should be preserved and brought back to life for future generations to appreciate and enjoy. We have other popular historic authors homes we can enjoy such as Greenway and Batemans, why not Undershaw too?

I do hope you cna save this important house. I live in Littlehampton where the James Bond author Ian Fleming’s army unit used to come to a pub for relaxation. It was rumoured that the pub (which became more of a club for the boys in his unit) was the place where many of Flemings ideas and scribblings were born. However recently our attempts to save it from development into flats were not successful. Please, please, please, do let the same fate fall to Undershaw. So many of our important buildings get ‘converted’ into soul-less shells. I would most definately visit if it was kept for public use as well as private functions. Maybe you could even arrange for ocassional weddings too. I hope that Mr. Gatiss can get both Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch behind you, and maybe Guy Ritchie could also ask for support from Robert Downey jr. and Jude Law. Good luck and I wil certainly join facebook.

SAVE OUR HERITAGE THIS MUST BE PRESERVED

We need to save this beautiful house. With luck, from Canada.

Please, save the house.

I hope, that this part of Victorian England and world of Sherlock Holmes would be saved. It is a real shame, that goverment want to destroy such miningfull place. Please, save it!

undershaw has to be saved. end of story. they say you can’t change history, exactly so leave this house be. us brits can save shakespears house? but not doyals? load of **** thank you very much. i’ll sit inside it for the rest of my life if it means it can stay. i swear to doyle above i will do it (i’m a sherlockian, not a christian). i will try my best to bring england to ruins if we do destroy it, i’ll be sickened by the fact that us brits would dare try to destroy a part of history for our all industrial future… bleh. from, alice, jennifer, charlotte, yasmin, caitlyn, matt, george, john, rheanna, james, 15-17 years old. yea, bring it on….

A house where some of the most delightful pieces of literature were written should be preserved for the years to come. It’s a shame the world might lose this beautiful place just because some people are against keeping it.

I find it incredible that we can celebrate Doyle’s creations with the huge franchise around Sherlock Holmes (and rightly so), yet the writer himself is neglected to this extent. There’s a blue plaque on 221B Baker Street – the same should be true of Undershaw. Sending my absolute support from Liverpool, UK.

SAVE THE HOUSE, PLEASE..

Save this place. Please England, don’t be stupid…

Save it, please.. ^_^
Klara Kovarova, CZ