New plaque to Barrie in Bloomsbury

[GOSH]

A new blue plaque was unveiled on 30 November 2015 on Downing Court, on the corner of Grenville Street and Bernard Street (WC1), commemorating Sir J M Barrie's connection with Bloomsbury. Barrie lived in lodgings on the site in his early years in London, and the house that used to stand at 8 Grenville Street (now the site of Downing Court) was the inspiration for the Darlings' home, where Peter Pan flew in to meet Wendy. The plaque was unveiled by David Barrie, great-great-nephew of Peter Pan's creator and put up thanks to a campaign by the Marchmont Association, with the support of Downing Court residents.

This is the third plaque put up to commemorate Barrie's life in London, and the first in Bloomsbury (apart from the memorial tablets at Great Ormond Street Hospital).The other plaques are at 100 Bayswater Road in Bayswater, opposite Kensington Gardens (where he wrote the play Peter Pan) and at the Adelphi, off the Strand (where he wrote the novel Peter and Wendy).

As Barrie himself described the Darlings' home in the first scene of the play:

"The night nursery of the Darling family, (...) is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury. We have the right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is chosen is that Mr Roget once lived there. So did we in days when his Thesaurus was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little compliment, The Darlings therefore lived in Bloomsbury.

It is a corner house whose top window, the important one, looks upon a leafy square (Ed. Note: this is Brunswick Square) from which Peter Used to fly up to it, to the delight of three children and no doubt the irritation of passers-by."