An OU professor is leading the fight to prevent the renovation of a British literary landmark.
Jim Davis, professional writing professor and president of the International Association of Crime Writers, is petitioning for the protection and preservation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s home in Hindhead, Surrey, U.K., he said.
This is the site where Doyle wrote such Sherlock Holmes novels as “The Hound of Baskervilles” and “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” and entertained literary guests, including “Dracula” author Bram Stoker and “Peter Pan” author J.M. Barrie, according to the Undershaw Preservation Trust website.
Current plans for the home are to renovate it and divide it into four flats, Davis said. The home should be transformed into a museum, culture center or “place that can be shared with the public,” he said.
“Turning [the home] into apartments would basically destroy the history,” Davis said.
Doyle designed and built his home, the Undershaw home, in 1897, according to the trust. His wife was suffering from tuberculosis, and he had hoped the property would alleviate some of her pain.
Doyle sold the property in 1921 for £4,000, a loss considering Doyle bought the property and had the home built for around £10,000, according to the trust. From 1924 until 2004, the home served as a hotel before a developer purchased the land. It currently stands vacant, the site of vandalism and wear by natural elements.
Davis has been a professor at OU since 1991 and writer of fiction since childhood. His first novel “The Murder of Frau Schütz” was published in 1988 and got him involved in the International Association of Crime Writers, he said.
Davis enjoys crime and mystery writing due in part to the freedom it provides: Authors in the genre can go anywhere and comment on the furthest recesses of humanity, he said. The crime genre also draws him because it tells the stories of people under pressure, he said.
“Only under pressure do we find the true measure of a person,” he said. “Crime writing is also anchored in the reality of the physical and psychological world, whereas some types of fiction play tennis without a net.”
So much of mystery writing can be traced back to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s protagonist Sherlock Holmes, Davis said.
“I have come to admire many different aspects of the stories, from the trick solutions, to the vivid characterizations, to the feeling of the time period,” Davis said. “They are much richer stories than many people think.”
“The movies mostly simplify them, and that’s what people remember — the pipe, the hat, things that aren’t really important in the stories,” he said.
Davis’s petition has collected signatures from personalities such as “Sherlock Holmes” director Guy Ritchie, actor Stephen Fry, author Anne Perry and other writers and actors.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
JacquelynnM 3 months, 3 weeks ago
Nice article, but I'm a bit confused. I'm an ambassador with The Undershaw Preservation Trust and the petition on saveundershaw.com is one I created several months ago. While it is wonderful that Mr. Davis is a supporter of The Undershaw Preservation Trust's campaign to save Undershaw, he was not involved with the petition.
Thank you, though, for bringing the threat to Undershaw to public attention in your area. Anyone can sign the petition, become a Facebook friend to The Undershaw Preservation Trust, and show their support on the website at saveundershaw.com. The next few months before the Judicial Review are crucial to get the word out and show international support for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home.
I'd like to refer your readers to more in-depth information in an article I wrote on Undershaw at the Baker Street Blog at http://www.bakerstreetblog.com/2011/03/effort-to-preserve-it-iden.html.
Thank you again. Save Undershaw!