For one awful moment, locals were afraid there'd been a murder. Or – worse – that somehow reality was mirroring BBC trailers and East Enders's Sharon Rickman was descending upon Picardy Place.
The pipe should have given it away.
This morning saw the long-awaited and welcome return of Broughton's Sherlock Holmes, removed in July 2009 as a precaution before the 'imminent' start of work on the Leith Walk section of the tramline.
Return of the statue marks an early and very visible stage in the much-vaunted restoration of disrupted streets between Picardy Place and Constitution Street (Breaking news, 26.7.12). Hence the high level of Council PR ballyhoo.
Sculptor Gerald Ogilvie Laing's solemn-looking Holmes was first unveiled in 1991, and is depicted contemplating the demise of his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was born nearby in 1859, but the building no longer stands (demolished to make way for an inner-city motorway which never arrived).
As revealed in Issue 167, the artist countered criticism of his public smoker by minutely inscribing around the rim of the calabash Meerschaum the words 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'. Laing himself passed away in November last year, aged 75.
The statue was commissioned by the Federation of Master Builders in celebration of its 50th anniversary, and before reinstatement today was conserved and generally buffed to perfection by local experts at Powderhall Bronze on Graham Street. One of them (David Wright), re-enacting his favourite bits from Marathon Man, appears below.
Who else would you like to see commemorated in bronze around Broughton? Send us your views.
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