Tucked in a book - the Abbey National brick receipt

My favorite thing to post about are small personal connections in books that I find (see for example this post on Gisela Seligmann). 

Today I had a chance to drop by the wonderful Second Story books and spied this innocuous and non-valuable book: The Return of Sherlock Holmes containing HOUN and the Return short stories is facsimile directly from the Strand Magazine. It was published in 1995, the second of three volumes published by  

The first thing I do is look to the fly leaf and title page to see if there's an owners signature, or ex libris note, embossed library mark, address stamp, etc. In this case there were none of these, but it was a cared for book, with a mylar wrapped on the dustjacket.

But tucked in the inside jacket was a small piece of ephemera that could appear meaningless to an innocent book-buyer. It is a small booklet from the Abbey National, a British Building Society ( a form of bank). This bank was headquartered on Baker Street in the address range covering 221, and for many years received and responded to letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. The pamphlet includes a small section on Baker Street, a card-sized map of the London tube, and a receipt. Let's take a look at the receipt...

The receipt is dated 13 May 1981, and is from the Abbey National Building Society on Baker Street. This is a bank teller receipt, but instead of a bank account number, it states "BRICK" with a price of 2 pounds sterling. Ah if only there was a brick tucked in this book. What brick?

Well earlier this year the 'Curious Collection of Robert Hess' was auctioned (Part 1 anyway), and among the items was the brick shown below. The description states 'A near fine example of this unusual piece of Sherlockiana. In the 1980s, 221b Baker Street was part of the Abbey National Building Society headquarters. When they decided to re-build the offices, several of the better bricks were set aside and sold to collectors in specially designed boxes, with the proceeds going to charity.' 

And so, the owner of this book in Maryland also owned the brick, purchased in London and lugged back in a suitcase to the United States. Certainly a unique piece of memorabilia. I actually tried to buy this brick was beaten by a larger waller on the day! I'll keep looking for a brick.

The nice coincidence is that the very latest Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes podcast on the Granada series (http://sherlockpodcast.com) the discuss a very short video created by the Granada team for Abbey National. No explanation exists for why this video was created, but perhaps the Abbey Treasure was a brick....