St Mary Mead
St Mary Mead is a fictional village created by popular crime fiction author Dame Agatha Christie.
The quaint, sleepy village was home to the renowned detective spinster Miss Marple. However, Christie first described a village of that name prior to Marple's introduction, in the 1928 Hercule Poirot novel The Mystery of the Blue Train. In that novel, St Mary Mead is home to the book's protagonist Katherine Grey. It is not the same village as Miss Marple's home, being in a different county. The village was first mentioned in a Miss Marple book in 1930, when it was the setting for the first Marple novel, The Murder at the Vicarage.
Location
Miss Marple's St Mary Mead is described in The Murder at the Vicarage as being in the fictional county of Downshire, but in the later novel
Miss Marple lives in Danemead Cottage, the last cottage in Old Pasture Lane. Her telephone number is "three five" on a manual exchange.[1]
Once it has been fully established as Miss Marple's home village, St Mary Mead is supposed to be in
Description
Before the
Then, slightly further up Lansham Road, was the Victorian structure of Gossington Hall. Until the 1950s this was lived in by a retired soldier, Colonel Arthur Bantry, and his wife Mrs Dolly Bantry, Miss Marple's best friends in the village. However, after Colonel Bantry died, Mrs Bantry sold the estate, but continued to live in the grounds, in the East Lodge. After one or two changes of ownership, the Hall was later bought by the film star Marina Gregg. One mile down Lansham Road was a very modern cottage called Chatsworth, also known as the "Period Piece" and "Mr Booker's new house". It was bought in the early 1930s by Basil Blake, a member of the art department at Lemville film studios. It was also inhabited by Basil's wife, Dinah Lee, an actress.
At the other end of Lansham Road, a small lane called Old Pasture Lane broke away from the main street. Nestled in this lane were three Queen Anne or Georgian houses, which belonged to three spinsters. The first house belonged to the long-nosed, gushing and excitable Miss Caroline Wetherby. The second house was that of Miss Amanda Hartnell, a proud, decent woman with a deep voice. The last cottage was called Danemead Cottage and belonged to Miss Jane Marple, the famous spinster who solved countless cases between 1930 and 1976. The Post Office, and the dressmaker's shop belonging to Mrs Politt, were located in front of the lane.
At the centre of the village was the Vicarage, a very grand Victorian structure at the end of Old Pasture Lane. This was home to the Vicar, Leonard Clement, his young wife, Griselda, with their nephew, Dennis, and later with their two sons, Leonard and David.
Near the gardens of the Vicarage was a back lane which led to a small cottage called Little Gates. Until 1930, it was inhabited by an Anglo-Indian colonel who moved away and briefly rented it out to Mrs Lestrange.
Beyond the Vicarage were two more houses. The first was the residence of the village GP, Doctor Gerard Haydock. He continued to live on in the village beyond 1960. The other cottage was much larger than Dr Haydock's and belonged to Mrs Martha Price-Ridley, a rich and dictatorial widow, and the most vicious gossip of all the old ladies in the village. There was also a large estate, Old Hall, belonging to the despised local magistrate, Colonel Lucius Protheroe. He was murdered in 1930 in Mr Clement's study in the Vicarage. After his death, the house was turned into a block of flats, to the great disapproval of the villagers. The flats housed Mrs Carmichael, a rich and eccentric old lady who was bullied by her maid, the Larkins, two sisters by the name of Skinner, one of whom was a supposed hypochondriac, and a young married couple. A robbery was later committed by the Skinner sisters.
Finally, just beyond the home of Mrs Price-Ridley was a small stream, leading to the fields of Farmer Giles. However, the Second World War took its toll on the village, and soon after the war Farmer Giles's fields were bought and a new housing estate was built. This was referred to as 'The Development' by the villagers who survived the war. A large hospital was also built nearby, staffed by many doctors and nurses. As well as this, there were some very large hotels and three film studios: Lenville, Elstree and Hellingforth.