In search of Sherlock

I put my deerstalker hat on yesterday and went to Liverpool in search of Sherlock. It was not Mr. Holmes I was looking for and yet he had a lot to do with it.

His creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a frequent visitor to Ingleton as his mother lived in the nearby hamlet of Masongill. His first marriage was at Thornton-in-Lonsdale parish church which is just a mile and a half from Ingleton.

Anyway, I've got a friend called Andy Ive who has this theory that Conan Doyle got the name for his famous sleuth from round here. You can see it all on Ingleton in Wikkipedia.

I am skeptical myself. The theory is based on the facts that there was a family of Sherlocks involved with Ingleton church and that lots of places near Masongill and Thornton are called Holmes.

Yesterday I was tracking down Cornelius Sherlock whose nephew was a vicar of Ingleton, whose brother was killed by lightening at Ingleton station and who designed St. Mary's church in Ingleton when it was rebuilt in 1886. He was an architect in Liverpool.

I found his obituary in the local history section of the Central Library and then looked in at the Picton Library, a beautiful round room which he designed after the British Library Reading Room.

Then I went up the street to the Walker Art Gallery which was also his creation. To think that we had such an inspired architect to design our parish church made me even more proud and glad that I live in Ingleton.

Here's the inside and the outside of the Picton library.





I'm still not convinced by the Holmes theory though.