Arthur Conan Doyle in Southsea

How Sherlock Holmes was created in a Southsea consulting room

Arthur Conan Doyle arrived in Southsea in 1882, a 23-year-old doctor fresh from Edinburgh with almost no money and no patients. He rented a house at 1 Bush Villas on Elm Grove and set up a medical practice on the ground floor, living above the surgery. Patients were slow to arrive, and the young doctor filled his empty hours writing stories.

It was here, in a small consulting room in Southsea, that Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes novel, was written at Bush Villas and published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. The Sign of the Four, the second Holmes novel, was completed in Southsea and published in 1890. These two works laid the foundation for one of the most famous characters in English literature.

Doyle lived in Southsea for eight years, from 1882 to 1890. During this time he married his first wife, Louise Hawkins, at St Osmund's Church in 1885. He played football as goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side that predated the professional club. He joined the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society, played cricket, and became an active member of the local community.

Doyle's medical practice eventually grew, but his literary ambitions overtook his medical career. He left Southsea in 1890 to study ophthalmology in Vienna, and never returned to live in the city. Bush Villas was destroyed by German bombing in January 1941, and the site is now occupied by a later building. A plaque marks the location, and a statue of Sherlock Holmes stands in Guildhall Square in the city centre. The Conan Doyle connection is one of Southsea's most distinctive cultural assets.