HLV - The Impossible House

I am still trying to work out the layout of the empty house at Leinster Gardens. The real “houses” are just a facade with a depth of 5 ft (= 1,50 m), i.e. a thick wall supported by steel girders stabilising to the real houses to the left and right. Underneath there are the tracks wide enough for two Underground trains to pass each other. These are the facts. In HLV we even get an aerial tracking shot showing us the layout.  

Here we see Mary entering the house. You can see a fake window to the left of the door. Which means that there is no window inside, not to the left of the door and not on the back since there is only a wall. 

Here we see the long hallway from John’s POV. Maybe the hallway is not more than 5ft wide but to John’s left there is a small lab. There is no room for the lab within a wall measuring 5 ft in depth. 

But there is more. Because here we get Sherlock’s POV when entering the hallway after Mary has shot the coin. Btw, where does he come from? Why did Mary not see him in that supposedly cramped space? And look - there is some space to Sherlock’s right, down in the corner. There are even some objects I cannot make out right now. 

And as if this was not enough, there is what seems to be a window, some object on the sill and in front of that a leather Chesterfield sofa or chair similar to the design of Sherlock’s chair we see in TAB’s Victorian 221B. 

So what do we have? 

A long hallway with wider spaces at both ends - the lab and window with the chair/sofa. 

Now we know that there is no space at all in a house which only consists of a 5ft deep wall without any windows. And what is more, here you can even look out at what seems to be one of the black doors to be found in the street. How is this possible? 

They chose to use an existing building you can find on hundreds of online photos and then gave it an interior that is just impossible and a chair like the one found in Sherlock’s Victorian MP. I never really believed in the boltholes since they have never been mentioned on the show before. And the fact that the most important bolthole is full of impossibilities confirms my belief that this whole part of the episode only happens in Sherlock’s mind. (Please also read this great meta plus additions on the empty houses in the show X).

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Great work!

Interesting! I’ve always been of the mind that, if EMP is real, it doesn’t start until after the Watson domestic. But at this point I’m prepared for anything to happen in S4. 

I always assumed the ‘facade’ bolthole at Leinster Gardens was a big ⊏ or possibly even a ▢ shaped service corridor running around the perimeter of the ‘vent for the steam engines’.

@gosherlocked Ok, here’s the pic from - presumably - when the facades of Leinster Gardens were built or the original houese standing in thei spot were pulled down:

This is the same view in 2012:

I’d say there’s no corridor or whatsoever behind the facade, at least nithing that looks like the room the scene is set in. So they couldn’t have filmed the scene inside the empty house on location. They either chose somewhere else or even built it in the studio. Because of how we leave the scene - the shot from above - I’d say it was set up in the studio but I’m not sure.

@isitandwonder: Thank you for adding this. The house is a facade, something appearing to be there, something that is not real. We have discussed how this refers to Mary, which is true, but there is a deeper meaning still. There is no empty house at all in Leinster Gardens. What we see, is not real. And they even show us by giving not just the address so everyone can do their research, they also show us the wall and the train tracks immediately behind. We are looking into a void instead of a house. 

oh my! and, "mary" is identified with this facade by the image of her face being projected onto it. So, is that saying she also doesn't really exist at all? Like, beyond being a not-reformed assassin with a stolen identity, just, not even real? I guess this is also in light of @green-violin-bow 's recent meta about historiographic metafiction. (It's linked in the new semester google folder, which i need to figure out how to put a link to on my blog header)