(Contains Spoilers!)
After Dr. Mortimer came to consult Sherlock Holmes on the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and the legend of the hound, Holmes "... sent down to Stamford’s for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor... I flatter myself that I could find my way about.” Using a similar map, I have labelled points of interest so we all may be as well familiarized with the moor as the London detective. The map can be found at the bottom of the page.
No. 1 Baskerville Hall If Sir Henry is correct, ...the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived, then circa 1400 AD would mark the hall's origin. Baskerville Hall sat in a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. It had two high, narrow towers, wrought iron gates, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars’ heads of the Baskervilles. In the front drive old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads ... The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil.
No. 3 Wicket-gate or Moor-gate ... a white wooden gate with a latch ... is halfway down the Yew Alley and leads onto the moor. The gate was only four feet high... low enough for a large hound to leap over. It was here that Dr. Mortimer suggests that Sir Charles stood smoking a cigar on the fateful night of his death. "... Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the Yew Alley rather than in his own house?”
No. 4 Sir Charles's dead body was found near the end of the Yew Alley. "... Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion..." It was determined that he ran from the gate to this spot. "... he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be ...." Dr. Mortimer observed the marks of a great hound about twenty yards from Sir Charles's body. The body lay fifty yards from ... an old tumble-down summer-house ... at the far end of Yew Alley.
No. 5 Lafter Hall The house of old Frankland the litigant, who lives four miles to the south of Baskerville Hall. From his telescope on the roof, Franklin could see a boy (Cartwright) taking supplies to someone (Holmes) at Black Tor.
No. 6 Merripit House "There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist—Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name." Merripit House is a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. A wall and an outhouse sit out behind the house.
No. 7 Grimpen "... This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters...." Watson visited the postmaster in Grimpen.
No. 8 Coombe Tracey Franklin's daughter, Laura Lyons lived and had a typewriting business in Coombe Tracey. Holmes stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey while on the case, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action.
No. 9 Black Tor A tor is a hill or rocky peak. Watson went to Black Tor to discover the stranger seen there. Holmes had a temporary hut on Black Tor to be close to Sir Henry and to keep an eye on Stapleton.
No. 10 Cleft Tor Is where Selden the convict was hiding, hardly a mile or two from Baskerville Hall where Barrymore signalled him with a candle in the window. Watson and Sir Henry went to Cleft Tor one night to capture Selden. It was then they heard a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. Selden hurls a rock at them, and they pursue. The two see another man silhouetted against the moon. Selden likely lost his life near Cleft Tor.
No. 11 Prehistoric Settlement ... grey circular rings of stone, a score of them at least... they are the homes of our worthy ancestors... “Neolithic man—no date.” Stapleton pointed out these stones to Watson while on the moor. Later Stapleton leads Sir Henry and Watson to this spot where Sir Hugo was to have met his end. ... a short valley between rugged tors ... stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast.
No. 12 Fernworthy A village that had little love for Franklin who thought nothing of closing off land where they liked to picnic.
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No. 13 Grimpen Mire A mire is swampy or boggy ground. “A false step yonder means death to man or beast... It’s a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire... there are one or two paths which a very active man can take...” Stapleton kept the hound in an old tin mine at the centre of the mire, and the mire is where Stapleton met his end. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried.
No. 14 The Hound Attacks Sir Henry It was on this spot Sir Henry was attacked by the hound on the moor path. Sometime after 10 p.m., the Baronet left Merripit House and started off for home. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog. ...we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. ... But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature’s flank. ...The giant hound was dead.
Ordnance map of the moor with additional notes
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