A Son of the Rock

Kirriemuir, in Angus, Scotland was the birthplace of playwright and creator of Peter Pan, J M Barrie.

It’s a nice wee town, north of Dundee and a few miles away from Glamis and its Castle which was the childhood home of the late Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. (I posted a photo of the War Memorial for Glamis village, on which is the name of her brother, as the Honourable Fergus Lyon, here.)

Many of its buildings are constructed from red sandstone:-

In the centre of the town there is of course a statue of Peter Pan:-

Barrie’s birthplace is now in the hands of the National Trust for Scotland. The family lived in a room and kitchen on the first floor.

In a house like this the kitchen is a largish room with a cooking range of some sort and usually what is called a bed recess, which is an alcove designed to fit a box bed into. Probably all the kids in a family would have slept in that bed. Today a kitchen like that would be described as a ‘family room’ as it was multi functional. The ‘room’ usually had a bed recess too and the parents slept in that one. Sometimes the ‘room’ doubled up as a sort of parlour during the day. There were eight children in the Barrie family and what with all of them and the noise of the weaving looms on which his father worked, it must have been a bit lively.

The entrance doorway is round the back:-

Just across form the entrance is a washhouse which was J M Barrie’s inspiration for the Wendy House in Peter Pan.

There’s not much light in there but you can see the tub, basket and washboard:-

Barrie never forgot his origins. One of his brothers died young and he used this as the genesis of the idea for the ‘boy who never grew up.’ Barrie’s mother could not get over her loss and he himself felt pressure to live up to her perfect memory of his dead brother. Despite his subsequent fame and fortune he was buried in the family plot in Kirriemuir Cemetery (which is up a fairly steep hill from the road leading east out of the town.)

Barrie’s grave. The plaque saying ‘J M Barrie Playwright’ is reasonably new. When I first visited there the grave’s surroundings were much plainer:-