Heavy page. All sixteen Ordnance Survey sheets at once: 143,240 buildings, about 9 MB to download. It takes a while to load and runs slowly on a phone; a single district is lighter.
in 3D · Holmes Hub × What is 3D?
This is All of London as it stood around 1889, rebuilt house by house. 143,240 buildings are traced one by one from
the Ordnance Survey’s 1:2500 town plans of 1869–1880; the lights are the 132 places Doyle names here.
The survey drew footprints, not heights. Heights are estimated from the size of each building and exaggerated 1.8×, so the
street pattern reads at a glance. 53 buildings have a photo on Wikimedia Commons that names them; they glow gold.
Press ▶ demo on the map and it tells one of the stories set in All of London, stop by stop, with Doyle’s words at every halt.
Marylebone from the south, with the places Doyle names. × The maps
Two maps from Doyle’s own time lie under the buildings (the flat map has four to choose from). Press K to cycle through them, and use the sliders to fade them in and out.
Charles Booth, 1889
Every street coloured by the means of the people who lived in it, from gold for the wealthy to black for the poorest. Seen from above it
shows where rich and poor lived, often only a turning apart.
Lowest class vicious, semi-criminalVery poor casual, chronic wantPoor 18s. to 21s. a weekMixed some comfortable, others poorFairly comfortable good ordinary earningsMiddle class well-to-doUpper-middle and upper wealthy
The Ordnance Survey, 1869–1880
The surveyors’ sheets at 1:2500, the source of every building here. Close up they are exact to the house: the 3D footprints sit on
the lines of the sheet.
Cavendish Square on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500. The demo switches between the two as it goes: the Ordnance Survey when it flies close to a street, Booth when it pulls back.
× Legend & keys
Building traced from the Ordnance SurveyGold roof a building with a photoDark block estimated, where no sheet covers itLight a place Doyle names; bigger means named more often
Keys and mouse
Q / E rotate W / S tilt R reset the view N north up K old maps: Booth 1889, then the Ordnance Survey, then off F full screen Esc stop the demo, leave full screen scroll zoom drag pan click a light Doyle’s own sentence click a building its name and photos
↺ rotate
rotate ↻
▲ tilt
▼ tilt
reset
⇧ north
no old map Booth 1889 Ordnance Survey Booth 1898–99 Bacon 1880s Marylebone West End Westminster and Lambeth Holborn and the City All of London (16 sheets, heavy) 1889 map
Greater London
▼ 2D
⛶ full screen
▶ demo
v 28-09, 18:06
— choose a story — The Abbey Grange (3 here · 4 in London) The Beryl Coronet (3 here · 4 in London) Black Peter (1 here · 2 in London) The Blanched Soldier (1 here · 1 in London) The Blue Carbuncle (10 here · 10 in London) The Boscombe Valley Mystery (4 here · 4 in London) The Bruce-Partington Plans (8 here · 9 in London) The Cardboard Box (3 here · 6 in London) A Case of Identity (4 here · 5 in London) Charles Augustus Milverton (3 here · 4 in London) The Copper Beeches (2 here · 2 in London) The Creeping Man (1 here · 2 in London) The Crooked Man (1 here · 1 in London) The Dancing Men (3 here · 3 in London) The Devil's Foot (1 here · 1 in London) The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (7 here · 7 in London) The Dying Detective (1 here · 1 in London) The Empty House (9 here · 9 in London) The Engineer's Thumb (4 here · 5 in London) The Final Problem (8 here · 8 in London) The Five Orange Pips (3 here · 4 in London) The Golden Pince-Nez (2 here · 2 in London) The Greek Interpreter (6 here · 7 in London) His Last Bow (2 here · 2 in London) The Hound of the Baskervilles (10 here · 10 in London) The Illustrious Client (12 here · 12 in London) The Lion's Mane (1 here · 1 in London) The Man with the Twisted Lip (9 here · 10 in London) The Mazarin Stone (3 here · 3 in London) The Missing Three-Quarter (2 here · 2 in London) The Musgrave Ritual (2 here · 2 in London) The Naval Treaty (4 here · 5 in London) The Noble Bachelor (8 here · 8 in London) The Norwood Builder (4 here · 7 in London) The Priory School (3 here · 3 in London) The Problem of Thor Bridge (1 here · 1 in London) The Red Circle (4 here · 4 in London) The Red-Headed League (6 here · 6 in London) The Resident Patient (7 here · 7 in London) The Retired Colourman (5 here · 8 in London) A Scandal in Bohemia (3 here · 3 in London) The Second Stain (2 here · 2 in London) Shoscombe Old Place (3 here · 3 in London) The Sign of Four (15 here · 22 in London) Silver Blaze (1 here · 1 in London) The Six Napoleons (7 here · 10 in London) The Solitary Cyclist (2 here · 2 in London) The Speckled Band (2 here · 2 in London) The Stockbroker's Clerk (2 here · 2 in London) A Study in Scarlet (9 here · 13 in London) The Sussex Vampire (2 here · 4 in London) The Three Gables (3 here · 3 in London) The Three Garridebs (5 here · 5 in London) The Three Students (2 here · 2 in London) The Valley of Fear (4 here · 4 in London) Wisteria Lodge (4 here · 4 in London) The Yellow Face (1 here · 3 in London)
Loading all of London: 143,477 buildings, about 9 MB. This takes a while and runs slowly on a phone.
Sherlock Holmes
London · 1889 · All of London
The game is afoot Fog on the river, gaslight on wet cobbles, and somewhere in these streets someone who does not want to be found. This is London as Doyle’s first readers knew it: every building traced by hand from the Ordnance Survey of the 1870s, laid over the map on which Charles Booth recorded who was rich and who went hungry. Each light is a place Doyle names. Follow them.
How to read it Drag to move, scroll to zoom, Q /E to rotate. Select a light for Doyle’s own sentence; the slider fades Booth’s map in and out.
the places from Doyle’s own text, on the streets of the time
⋯ ×
card 1× 2× 4× 8× full
zoom 2× 4× 8× 16× full screen
Comments Corrections, missing places and favourite passages are very welcome. Be kind; comments are moderated.
Text: Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes stories (public domain). Map 1889: Charles Booth, Descriptive Map of London Poverty , Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0, rectified to the street grid. Buildings: Ordnance Survey 1:2500, 1869–1880, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Streets: OpenHistoricalMap (CC0) and OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, licence and author with each photo. 
All of London, 1889in 3D · Holmes Hub