Liebster Award and Peter Pan

At Novel Points of View we are delighted to receive a Liebster Award from writer and blogger extraordinaire Rosemary Gemmell. 

Apparently the award recipient should give five facts about herself but as we are five writers we’re giving one fact each!

Gwen Kirkwood: My favourite colour is royal blue. My birthstone is a sapphire and I have sapphires in my engagement ring.

Gill Stewart: The country I’d most like to live in is Scotland but the country I’d most like to visit is South Africa.

Jenny Harper: I have a guilty pleasure: Häagen-Dazs Chocolate and Pralines ice cream - I can eat a whole tub!

Mary Smith: I was – many years ago – school high jump champion for four years in a row.

Linda Mitchelmore: I have a weakness for Prosecco.... I was introduced to it on a writing holiday in Italy by a young American girl called April. I never drink it without thinking of her.

We’d like to pass the Liebster Award to ChocLit Authors  and to Heroine Addicts, both excellent blogs of interest to writers and readers

So now you know a little bit more about us, on with the blog, coming this time from Mary Smith

Birthplace of Peter Pan

I have just attended an evening of jazz played by Gentle Jazz, a popular band based in Dumfries & Galloway, along with vocalist Terri Farley. The event was to raise funds for the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust which aims to create Scotland’s first Centre for Children’s Literature in Moat Brae House, Dumfries, south west Scotland.

It was the garden of Moat Brae House which gave J M Barrie the inspiration for Peter Pan. As a child Barrie was a pupil at Dumfries Academy and he played in the garden of nearby Moat Brae. The house was designed in 1823 by the architect Walter Newall who was born in New Abbey near Dumfries and who was also responsible for designing Glenlair House near Corsock, home of the scientist James Clerk Maxwell.

Moat Brae was built for a Robert Threshie of Barnbarroch. The house changed hands several times and in 1863 was sold to Henry Gordon, a solicitor and bank agent in Dumfries. His sons, Henry and Stewart befriended J M Barrie was a frequent visitor to their home. The house, however splendid the interior with its square central hall, circular first floor gallery and a domed glass roof, was of less interest to the young Barrie than the garden where the three boys played. It was this garden which was to inspire Barrie in later years to write the story of Peter Pan and Neverland. When he visited Dumfries Academy in 1924 Barrie told his audience: “When the shades of night began to fall, certain young mathematicians shed their triangles, crept up walls and down trees, and became pirates in a sort of odyssey that long afterwards was to become the play Peter Pan. For our escapades in a certain Dumfries Garden, which is an enchanted land to me, were certainly the genesis of that nefarious work.”

The house was turned into a nursing home in 1914 and when it closed in 1997 the building was left locked and empty, at the mercy of vandals who broke windows allowing pigeons to move in and continue the destruction. In 2009 it was decided to demolish the house – and it was at this point a group of local people took action and, with actress Joanna Lumley at their head, launched a campaign to save Moat Brae.

They succeeded in purchasing the house and garden – literally only three days before the bulldozers moved in. In a way, that was perhaps the easiest part for now the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust faces the monumental task of raising between £3-4 million pounds to restore the building – and establish a national centre which will celebrate children’s literature through events, visiting exhibitions, workshops by authors, illustrators and story tellers. The riverside garden, where J M Barrie played, will be developed into an educational play area for children based on the Peter Pan story and where every plant tells a story.

There have already been many fundraising events such as the evening of gentle jazz I enjoyed and lots more events are being planned by all kinds of groups and people enthusiastic to see the birthplace of Peter Pan restored and in use.

The Trust has a website at www.peterpanmoatbrae.org where there is lots more information about this exciting project. Many thanks to Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust and Graeme Robertson for use of the pictures.