St. Mary Mead

St. Mary Mead was the fictional village created by popular crime fiction author Dame Agatha Christie.

The quaint, sleepy village was home to the renowned detective spinster Miss Jane 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. 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.

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 The Body in the Library Downshire has become Radfordshire. In the BBC Miss Marple TV adaptation of Nemesis, a letter from Mr. Rafiel's solicitors indicate that St, Mary Mead is located in the (also) fictional county of Middleshire. The St. Mary Mead of Katherine Grey is in Kent.

Once it has been fully established as Miss Marple's home village, St. Mary Mead is supposed to be in the southeast of England, 25 miles from London. It is just outside the town of Much Benham and is close to Market Basing (which appears as a name of a town in many of Agatha Christie's novels and short stories), 12 miles from the fashionable seaside resort of Danemouth, and also 12 miles from the coastal town of Loomouth. Other towns said to be close by include Brackhampton, Medenham Wells, and Milchester. The neighbourhood of St. Mary Mead is served by trains arriving at Paddington railway station, indicating a location west or south west of London. It has been suggested that Market Basing is Basingstoke and Danemouth is Bournemouth so this would place St. Mary Mead in Hampshire. In the BBC Miss Marple television adaptations the Hampshire village of Nether Wallop was used as the setting for St. Mary Mead. Brackhampton could be Bracknell, just north of Basingstoke (Market Basing).

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