IT is not a well known fact that for more than half of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s life, his mother lived in Masongill near Ingleton.

He not only visited her there and married his first wife nearby, he set short stories in and around the Ingleton and Ingleborough area and referenced the region in several of his works.

On Saturday, November 4, at 7.30pm, the Don’t Go Into The Cellar Theatre Company will perform ‘The Singular Exploits of Sherlock Holmes’ at St Mary the Virgin Church in Ingleton.

In June they performed at St Oswald’s Parish Church, Thornton-in-Lonsdale, where Sir Arthur married first wife Louisa Hawkins in 1885 and now they are returning to perform at the home of ‘The Sherlock Window’.

In 1886, when Conan Doyle penned ‘A Study in Scarlet’, the first Sherlock Holmes story, he was originally going to call his hero Sherrinford Holmes, but something happened to change his mind.

At the time, his two youngest sisters were pupils of Storrs Hall School, a private school for young ladies in Ingleton.

The school was collecting funds to finance the purchase of a handsome new brass lectern in the design of an eagle with outstretched wings, to place in St Mary the Virgin, Ingleton.

The church was being rebuilt to the design of Cornelius Sherlock, the Liverpool architect responsible for ‘The Picton Reading Room’ and ‘The Walker Art Gallery’ in Liverpool.

The lectern can be seen in the church today with the inscription ‘a gift from pupils past and present of Storrs Hall School’

Cornelius was younger brother of Liverpool mail proprietor, Randal Hopley Sherlock, who had been struck and killed by lightning at Ingleton Railway Station in 1875, while visiting his son, Thomas Dod Sherlock, the vicar at St Mary the Virgin.

A stained glass window dedicated to the memory of Randal Hopley Sherlock by his widow was installed in the medieval tower of St Mary the Virgin and is still there today.

The tower remained intact when the body of the church was demolished and rebuilt in the Gothic style seen today.

A foundation stone carries the date 1886, the year that Conan Doyle changed his mind and decided to call his hero Sherlock instead of Sherrinford.

Tickets for the November 4 performance cost £6 each and are available from the church, or from ‘Uncle Jeremy’s Household’ in the village centre (the shop ‘Uncle Jeremy’s Household’ is named after an 1885 Conan Doyle short story set in and around Ingleton).

Tickets can also be bought online at unclejeremy.com/theatre-tickets-the-singular-exploits-of-sherlock-holmes-46-p.asp

Fancy dress is optional for audience members, but Uncle Jeremy’s Household will offer a cash prize of £100 to the best dressed character from a Sherlock Holmes story in the audience.

The winner at the June performance was Cynthia McDougall for her ‘Irene Adler’ outfit.