MOST people will associate the tall, gaunt and distinctive figure, dressed in a caped coat and deer-stalker hat, with the fog-filled London streets but the world’s most famous detective had many connections with Hampshire.

Sherlock Holmes was at home among the capital’s alleyways and courtyards where hansom cabs clattered by, newsboys shouted the latest headlines and gas lights shed a dim light on the swirling, all enveloping smog.

However his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (pictured below) enjoyed Hampshire’s coastline together with the peace and tranquility of the New Forest.

Daily Echo:

In the stories Holmes did travel southwards to Hampshire, accompanied by the faithful Dr Watson, who is considered by many of the sleuth’s enthusiasts as coming from the county.

In fact Watson’s origins are as mysterious as those of Holmes himself, but it is known that the author, who first thought of the detective and his adventures as he sat waiting for patients in his consulting room at 1, Bush Villas, Elm Grove, Southsea.

Readers will recall that Dr Watson took his army surgeon’s course at Netley Hospital on Southampton Water and he sometimes thought of the New Forest when “Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye.”

According to Conan Doyle it was Watson who described the Hampshire countryside with “little white fleecy clouds, the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amidst the light green of the new foliage.”

This description appears near the beginning of The Adventure of the Copper Beeches as Holmes and Watson travel by train to Winchester.

It is in this story that Miss Violet Hunter is offered a job as governess by Mr Jephro Rucastle who describes his house as a “charming rural place on the far side of Winchester.

"It is the most lovely country dear lady, and the dearest old country house”.

Many readers who avidly follow the crime-fighting duo believe the mythical house was sited somewhere between Otterbourne and Chandler’s Ford.

Scattered throughout the Sherlock Holmes stores there are other references to Hampshire.

In Silver Blaze the author wrote: “Four days later Holmes and I were again in Winchester, to see the race for the Wessex Cup. Colonel Ross met us by appointment, outside the station, and we drove in his drag to the course beyond the town.”

Another New Forest investigation by Holmes is recounted in The Dark Angels, written by Conan Doyle’s youngest son Adrian, where the detective and Dr Watson catch a Bournemouth-bound train from Waterloo to Lyndhurst Road Station where they are met by a woman who says: “Mr Sherlock Holmes, thank heavens the Beaulieu Road Post Office delivered your telegram in time.”

Although born in Edinburgh, the author enjoyed the south coast and while living in Portsmouth he was secretary of the Literary and Scientific Society, whose president, significantly, was a Dr J Watson.

Conan Doyle returned to the New Forest and acquired the house, Bignell Wood, on the Southampton to Fordingbridge road.

He died aged 71 on July 7, 1930.

Daily Echo:

A quarter of a century after he died, Sir Arthur’s remains, together with those of his wife who died ten years later, were exhumed in Sussex and their bodies taken to the graveyard of Minstead Church.

“This reburial is to honour a promise which was made to Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle that they should be reburied here,” a family spokesman told the Daily Echo in July, 1955.

“They liked Minstead very much indeed and always felt that this was their home.”