What’s up with the weird therapy room in “The Six Thatchers”?

Question

At the end of The Six Thatchers, Sherlock is having a therapy session. We get two angles at the room in which this is happening:

Unless I am very much mistaken, this suggests the following layout of the room (cross-section from the perspective of the second still):

I find this layout bizarre:

• On a considerable length, there is a connection between the rooms that can only be crossed crouching.

• Only one third of the room is used. As you want therapy sessions to be private, nobody can use the other segments.

Another bizarre aspect are the windows, which are almost based at ground level. This suggests that the room was once bigger and horizontally split, with the therapy happening in the upper part. But this still does not explain why the walls have not been extended to the ground.

My questions are:

• Is this room really shaped like that or did I make a mistake?

• Was this filmed in a real location or is this a set?

• Either way: What are the reasons for this bizarre architecture?

Answer 1

It looks a little like a converted church. An architect would have added an additional floor to a church with originally incredibly high ceilings, and the upper floor then only retains the upper portion of the window. The windows in your example seems to be the correct shape to fit this type of building.

Here is another example:

As for the odd three quarter wall, it should be in fact just a wall, but it doesn't extend entirely from ceiling to floor. This will be because the windows will not let enough light in on their own, so a gap is added at the bottom of the wall in order to let more light into each room.

Of course, for a confidential therapy session this is an absurd setting, as anyone in any of the other rooms would be able to hear every word being said. However it is likely a real place, rather than a constructed set. I would speculate it was chosen as a setting for this scene because it is so wide open, and has a uniquely shaped window that allows for very interesting lighting effects.