Tudor Close and Anthony Pratt

In my experience, if you're ever asked the name of the house in Cluedo in a quiz (in the UK at least), the answer is always Tudor Close. This article in the Birmingham Post, celebrating the game's 60th anniversary in 2009, agrees. With quotations from Anthony Pratt, the inventor of Cluedo, dating from a 1990 interview, and contemporary (i.e. 2009) quotes from his daughter Marcia Davies, it describes the inventor as a "clerk" and a "former civil servant".

According to Wikipedia the house is called Tudor Mansion, but "named Tudor Close, Tudor Hall, Boddy Manor or Boddy Mansion in some editions". The murder victim (named Dr. Black in the UK version) is apparently called Mr. Boddy in American editions, so that explains the last two house names; I'm guessing that Tudor Mansion is another name used in America – possibly the original one.

This article on a blog site called Artists Open Houses claims that the inspiration for the house was the Tudor House Hotel in Rottingdean, Sussex (now a suburb of Brighton). The article takes the form of an interview with artist Amanda Davidson, who appears to be a current resident of Tudor Close in Rottingdean and was about to open her house to members of the public (as part of the Artists Open Houses project). Ms. Davidson believes that Cluedo was based on a series of murder mystery games that "travelling entertainers" Anthony and Elva Pratt hosted at the Tudor House Hotel as early as the 1920s. Wikipedia, on the other hand, reports that in the inter–war years (i.e. the 1920s and 30s), Anthony Pratt was a professional musician (one–time accompanist to the "renonwed soprano Kirsten Flagstad"), and that he "earned a living playing piano recitals in country hotels", where the evening's entertainment might also include a murder mystery game. I have my doubts as to whether he (and his wife Elva) would actually have hosted the murder mystery games, as Amanda Davidson suggests, but it would make perfect sense if these events inspired Anthony Pratt to create Cluedo; and if one of the venues was the Tudor House Hotel in Tudor Close, Rottingdean, this may well have inspired the name of his fictitious mansion.

© Haydn Thompson 2017–23