Visit Dartmoor National Park in England, and you'll see the desolate landscape Sherlock Holmes braved in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Travel to the town of Princetown, deep within this brooding landscape, and you'll see the prison from which the murderer Seldon escaped to terrorize the local inhabitants. Stop by the Dartmoor National Park High Moorland Visitor Centre, and you'll see the great detective himself, along with the terrible black hound that haunted the Baskerville family.
It was here that Arthur Conan Doyle stayed a century ago, when the visitor center was the Rowe Duchy Hotel. From there, he investigated the claims of his friend, journalist Fletcher Robinson, who told him of about the Black Shuck, a dark, spectral beast that prowled the lonely moors, looking for souls to devour.
Travel north, to the seaside town of Cromer in the county of Norfolk, and you'll see where Fletcher Robinson first told Arthur Conan Doyle about the Black Shuck. The two were visiting Cromer for a golfing holiday, when Robinson told Doyle about the legendary Black Shuck that had haunted the good people of Norfolk for centuries.
According to researchers, Arthur Conan Doyle transformed Dartmoor's Fox Tor Mire into Grimpen Mire for The Hound of the Baskervilles. He transformed stories of a notorious Dartmoor lord of the manor, Richard Cabell of Brock Hall, into Hugo Baskerville. He even combined several large houses, so say Dartmoor historians, into Baskerville Hall.
Historians in seaside Cromer disagree, at least with the latter. They point to Cromer Hall, a local manor house, as the inspiration for Baskerville Hall. They claim that descriptions in The Hound of the Baskervilles portray Cromer Hall, not some backward Dartmoor manor house.
Did an evil lord of Cromer Hall once live to hunt and terrorize the peasantry? Was this wicked aristocrat killed by the ghostly Black Shuck, whose fearsome howls could be heard across the land at night? And does the Black Shuck still roam Cromer and Dartmoor?
If you visit either place, and the wind sweeps over the land, then you'll know.
Dragon Dave
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