Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Infamous Neighbour

In any given crowd, most people will have heard of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the brilliant creator of Sherlock Holmes.  Some may even have heard about his involvement with the infamous Cottingley Fairy photographs.  I doubt if any of them will recognise the name of his equally fascinating neighbour, Whitaker Wright.  Yet Wright deserves to be just as well known for his own extraordinary creation - the fabulously unlikely, yet mis-named 'ballroom beneath the lake.'

Comprising a dome of riveted iron work, and thick glass plates, it still lurks hidden beneath the waters of its artificial lake. Designed to allow those beneath to look up at swimmers and fish alike, the glass filters an unearthly green glow down into the room beneath, and looks like it owes more to the imagination of Jules Verne than to the mind of a Victorian silver millionaire.

Actually created as a billiard room, this amazing structure played host to more than just a few games of billiards; one Victorian medium claimed to have channelled spirits there in the eerie sub-aquarian structure.  That Wright should have been playing host to mediums without knowledge of his neighbour of less than four miles away, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - a man whose interest in mediumship cost him his friendship with Harry Houdini, strikes me as unlikely.  Yet, despite an unusual shared interest, and their very close proximity, (to repeat - Conan Doyle's self designed home 'Undershaw' is less than a handful of miles away), it is hard to find mention of any meetings between them. 

This could be due to Wright's spectacular fall from grace.  He got into financial difficulties trying to float The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, (Baker Street - yet another connection with Conan Doyle surely), and was eventually found guilty of fraud.  On being sentenced, he committed suicide by taking cyanide. 

I have made him one of the villains of my latest novel 'The Last Changeling', but despite his inability to pay his investors, and the ruination of a Marquess, there was a genuine outpouring of grief at his funeral in Lea Park.  Poor Whitaker was hoping for a knighthood from his public spirited attempt at creating an underground railway for the benefit of the people of London, instead all he got was ruin and disgrace.   

Despite my caricaturing him as a villain, I believe he would have made every bit as interesting a dinner guest as his more famous neighbour, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.