Alright guys, so here are the scans of the article!

Since tumblr would resize the scan I uploaded it in full size here.

The meet-up and flash mob arranged in support of Save Undershaw got some attention. I’ve translated the article if anyone is interested in reading it. 

It is from MetroXpress, a free newspaper found at trainstations and some buses in Copenhagen (probably around other cities in Denmark, too). I took one on the run and didn’t even get the time to look through it before yesterday when this little gem surprised me. 

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Demonstrators are fighting to save ’Undershaw’, where Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the stories about the master detective Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes may possibly soon be Sherlock Homeless. The Country House Undershaw, where the writer sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the books about the pipe smoking detective, is to be turned into owner-occupied flats and this has made fans of the famous books demonstrate on the streets of London.

“It’s a disgrace that the only home of Arthur Conan Doyle that still exists, is to be destroyed like that. The state should by it,” says Derek Wood, who MetroXpress meets on Trafalgar Square in the British capitol.

He was one of several hundreds of demonstrators and the ill-tempered Sherlock Holmes-fans have several prominent supporters.

The actor Stephen Fry and the writer Julian Barnes is among the celebrities who also has publicly condemned the building-plans on Undershaw, and the people behind the ‘Save Undershaw’ campaign can also feel that newer film and TV-series based on the books of the detective make more people sign up.

Campaign leader Lynn Gale says to MetroXpress that she thinks it would be ‘illegal’ to rebuild Undershaw and that the house should remain on the ground because of its history.

She also points on the fact that among other things, Charles Dickens’ and Jane Austens homes are protected.

The town council in Waverly in southeast England, where Undershaw lies, has expressed a wish about buying the property just to protect it but do not have enough money, unless the Save Undershaw-group is willing to pay a significant part of the purchase price.

The debate about Undershaw has raged since 2004, when a construction company bought the Country House concerning changing it to flats.

The big resistance has delayed the project so nothing concrete has happened yet.

In next month the high court in London is to finally conclude on whether the building gets a green light – or if the plan discarded once and for all.

[Caption under the big picture in the middle: The people behind the campaign ‘Save Undershaw’ are fighting to save the Country House Undershaw, where the writer behind Sherlock Holmes wrote his books about the famous detective. Foto: Baker Street Babes]

[Caption under the second picture with Sherlock Holmes on it: The country house Undershaw is set to be turned into flats. Foto: Baker Street Babes]

Undershaw:

• Location. Undershaw is located in the village Hinhead in Surrey 65 kilometers south of London.
• Building king I. Arthur Conan Doyle bought the plot in 1895 and got the big 930 square metre three-story house build himself. The writer wife, Louise, suffered from tuberculosis and Doyle thought that she’d benefit from getting away from Londons smoke and out to the countryside. He lived there from 1897 to 1907 – Louise died in 1906. (Doyle lived to 1930)
• Occupation. Here he wrote the majority of the books about Sherlock Holmes – among them “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.
• Visits. Apart from that he many prominemt gentlemen visited him at Undershaw . Collegues as Bram Stoker (‘Dracula’), George Bernard Shaw (‘Pygmalion’) and JM Barrie (‘Peter Pan’).
• Building king II. When Arthur Conan Doyle moved out of Undershaw, the house was transformed into a hotel and stayed that way until 2004 where it was bought by Fosseway Limited. Since then it has remained empty while the debate about the place’ future has raged.