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How could Baskerville Hall be described?

Arthur Conan Doyle provides the reader with many rich descriptions of Baskerville Hall. In Chapter Six, readers get their first look at the exterior of the residence, and it's a bleak one. After passing through a gate described as "…a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars’ heads," Watson and Sir Henry look down a long drive "to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end."  


The whole front, says Watson, was draped in ivy, "with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil." He goes on to describe the building in gloomy terms, evoking sensory imagery of something dark, cold, sharp, and ancient:



"From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke."



If the reader doesn't get the point, Sir Henry drives it home. He notes the looks of the place are "enough to scare any man," and he resolves to have electricity installed, so he can bathe the hall in artificial light.


Once the characters go inside, they encounter an interior that is "large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak." The language suggests solidity, but there is also a continuing sense of darkness and menace.


  • The decor is "dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp."

  • The dining room is "a place of shadow and gloom," with a row of torches blazing on the wall, and a gallery of somber family portraits.

  • The bedrooms are more modern and brightly decorated, but sound carries, "so that in very dead of the night," notes Watson, "there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable" -- the sobs of a woman.

  • And, at later points in the book (for instance, Chapter 9), we read of creaking hallways and dark, gloomy corridors.

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