In Kensington Gardens last week, I walked past the Peter Pan statue.
The creator of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, commissioned Sir George Frampton to build the statue in 1902. It was erected in Kensington Gardens in 1912 secretly over night to appear in the morning as if by magic.
J.M. Barrie lived close to Kensington Gardens, it’s where he first bumped into ‘the Lost Boys’ (the Davies boys in real life, first cousins to the writer Daphne du Maurier), who inspired his children’s stories. In his Peter Pan tale, ‘The Little White Bird’, Peter flies out of his nursery and lands beside the Long Water (part of the Serpentine lake – created in the 1720s). The statue is located on this exact spot.
The statue features squirrels, rabbits, mice and fairies climbing up to Peter, who is stood at the top of the bronze statue. Before his death, Barrie gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children's hospital in Bloomsbury, which continues to benefit from them.
The creator of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, commissioned Sir George Frampton to build the statue in 1902. It was erected in Kensington Gardens in 1912 secretly over night to appear in the morning as if by magic.
J.M. Barrie lived close to Kensington Gardens, it’s where he first bumped into ‘the Lost Boys’ (the Davies boys in real life, first cousins to the writer Daphne du Maurier), who inspired his children’s stories. In his Peter Pan tale, ‘The Little White Bird’, Peter flies out of his nursery and lands beside the Long Water (part of the Serpentine lake – created in the 1720s). The statue is located on this exact spot.
The statue features squirrels, rabbits, mice and fairies climbing up to Peter, who is stood at the top of the bronze statue. Before his death, Barrie gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children's hospital in Bloomsbury, which continues to benefit from them.