Neverland Restored
As the house that inspired J M Barrie prepares to open to visitors, Judy Vickers meets the dedicated team who saved it from demolition
THE news reel shows a moustachioed and rather insignificant-looking man, with sunken cheeks and a tired face. He’s surrounded by milling, cheering crowds, which appear – British Pathé News-style – to be moving faster than life.
This is J M Barrie, renowned author, now 64 years old, returning to Dumfries in 1924 to receive the freedom of the burgh. And if he looks faintly awkward at all the attention, the speeches he gave that day show no sign of it.
On the contrary, the author speaks warmly of the south-west town where he lived between the ages of 13 and 18, after moving from Kirriemuir.
“I think the five years or so that I spent here were probably the happiest of my life, for indeed I have loved this place,” he said.
The garden of the house where two of his school friends lived was, he declared, instrumental in the creation of his most famous work.
“For our escapades in a certain Dumfries garden, which is enchanted land to me, were certainly the genesis of that nefarious work, Peter Pan.”
But while Peter Pan never grew up, the home of Barrie’s friends, Moat Brae, was definitely showing signs of age by the 21st century. A nursing home when Barrie visited in 1924, it was on the brink of demolition by its housing association owners in 2009, prompting locals to form the Peter Pan Action Group. With three days’ notice, they saved it from the bulldozers – but had a monumental task on their hands.
Project director Cathy Agnew, of the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust, explains, “It wouldn’t have got through another winter. There were bits that one couldn’t even walk in – the drawing room was unsafe, there were dead pigeons everywhere, there was flooding, there were cracks, broken glass. It was a shambles and it smelt of damp – it was ghastly.”
Now, 10 years on and a £5.8 million fundraising campaign later, the house has been restored to its original grandeur, with new purpose as a visitor attraction and National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling.
For many – especially locals – saving the house itself was just as important as preserving Barrie’s inspiration. Moat Brae was built in 1823 by architect Walter Newall in Greek Revival style. It had been commissioned by Robert Threshie, a solicitor, and designed to be the foremost house in the town.
“It is a wonderful Georgian house. It was wrong to even consider pulling it down,” says Cathy.