Building    To 1938

8 Grenville Street

Categories: Property

The Marchmont Association thoroughly research their plaques and they found some interesting information about Barrie’s home:

“Barrie (1937) writes (in the third person) about his first residences in London in The Greenwood Hat: Being a Memoir of James Anon 1885-1887. Here we learn that after a brief period residing in Guilford Street in March/April 1885, he moved to cheaper lodgings at Grenville Street. According to the respected Mackail (1941), Barrie was at 8, Grenville Street in 1885, then again from September 1886 to August 1888. According to Barrie (1937: 20), Barrie ‘was in that Grenville Street house . . . off and on for years, sometimes in its finest apartments (all according to the state of his finances)’. Although Peter Pan was not written from his Grenville Street address, Barrie places the Darlings’ home in Grenville Street in his own words, in the first scene of the play ..., thus confirming that the ‘imaginary Bloomsbury’ of Peter Pan and the Darling family draws extensively on Barrie’s time at Grenville Street, in particular, in relation to the location of the Darlings’ family home, and its views overlooking Brunswick Square. The c.1929 image of 8-10 Grenville Street, cross-referenced to the Horwood map of 1799, shows that No. 8 was on the corner of Grenville Street and Bernard Street, with windows facing into Brunswick Square - a perfect fit with the narrative suggested by Barrie scholars. Grenville Street was never re-numbered and 8-10, Grenville Street, which had been a Nurses' Home run by the Throat Nose & Ear Hospital in Gray's Inn Road, was demolished in 1938 and replaced the following year by the present-day Downing Court.”

The house at the very left of the photo still exists in Grenville Street and is still a shop, at the corner with Colonnade.

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This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
8 Grenville Street

Commemorated ati

J.M. Barrie - WC1

Sir James Matthew Barrie, Bart. OM, 1860 - 1937, novelist, dramatist and crea...

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Other Subjects

Pelham / Hobson's Place

Pelham / Hobson's Place

Our map of 1837 shows a street called Pelham Street. Possibly this became Pelham Place and then Hobson's Place before being built over by the Greater London Council in 1966.

Place, Property

1 memorial
Dalston City Partnership

Dalston City Partnership

Initially we could discover little about this body but Rocker Ages solved the puzzle - they were a private, limited by guarantee company, in the regeneration business. From Lifelong Learning: "DCP ...

Group, Property

1 memorial
Pitzhanger Manor

Pitzhanger Manor

In records prior to 1800 their names made it is easy to confuse the house that stood here with another which stood at what is now Pitzhanger Park, about a mile to the north. In 1768, George Dance ...

Building, Property

2 memorials
United Friendly Insurance Company

United Friendly Insurance Company

The Picture source has: "United Friendly Life Insurance was founded back in 1908, with their Head Offices based in London 42, Southwark Bridge Road, SE1."

Building, Property

1 memorial
Tudor Hall - Barnet

Tudor Hall - Barnet

Funded by the first Governors of the Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School and the Corporation of London.  Now part of Barnet and Southgate College and used as a banqueting hall and conference space, et...

Building, Education, Property

1 memorial