The Sherlock Holmes Museum is the most popular privately run museum in London, dedicated to the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes. A museum is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development open to the public which acquires conserves researches communicates and exhibits the Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in Publication in 1887 It is situated at 239 Baker Street,[1] near the north end of Baker Street in central London close to Regent's Park. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. For other meanings see Regent's Park (disambiguation Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks [2][3]
The Georgian town house which the Museum occupies as "221b Baker Street" was formerly used as a boarding house from 1860 to 1936, and covers the period of 1881 to 1904 when Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson were reported to have resided there as tenants of Mrs Hudson. A boarding house, also known as a "rooming house" (mainly in the United States) or a "lodging house" is a House (often a family home The Museum is run by The Sherlock Holmes International Society, a non-profit making organisation.
The address 221B was the subject of a protracted dispute between the Museum and the nearby Abbey National building. 221B Baker Street is the fictional London residence of the detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Since the 1930s, the Royal Mail had been delivering mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes to the Abbey National Bank, and they had employed a special secretary to deal with such correspondence. Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. The Museum went through several appeals for such mail to be delivered to it, on the grounds that it was the most appropriate organisation to respond to the mail, rather than the bank whose primary business was to lend money out on interest. Although these initiatives were all unsuccessful, the issue was finally resolved in 2002 when the Abbey National vacated its headquarters after seventy years, and the mail is now currently delivered to the Museum.