Hobbs End
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Hobbs End is the name of a fictional location used in several works of speculative fiction. Its name is possibly intended to convey a sense of unease, evil, or "wrongness", since "Hob" is an old nickname for the devil.
The 1958 BBC science fiction television serial Quatermass and the Pit centered around the discovery of alien artifacts uncovered during the construction of a new office block at the fictional Hobbs Lane (formerly 'Hob's Lane') in Knightsbridge, London. The serial also mentioned strange events taking place in 1927 when the Hobbs Lane underground station was built. When the serial was adapted into a film (also titled Quatermass and the Pit) in 1967, the London Underground system was being extended with the construction of the Victoria Line. Accordingly, the producers of the movie decided to change the setting to the construction of the Hobbs End underground station, a fictional extension of the Central Line. This revision has been attributed to Anthony Hinds, the son of Hammer Films co-founder Will Hammer.
A similar name crops up in the 1971 Doctor Who serial The Dæmons, which is set in the fictional Wiltshire village of "Devil's End". The plot of The Dæmons bears several similarities to that of Quatermass and the Pit.
In the 1995 movie In the Mouth of Madness, directed by John Carpenter and a pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft, "Hobbs End" is the name of a New England town in the books of horror author Sutter Cane, "this century's most widely-read author". As parts of Sutter Cane's stories start to influence reality, Hobbs End also becomes real, and is the setting for much of the action in the movie.
Hobbs End is the title and Pacific Northwest setting of a 2002 slasher movie directed by Philip Segal. It received uniformly below average reviews.
In the 2003 short story "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman, a pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes, Hobbs Lane is in Shoreditch, London, where the murder victim is found.
