The Surrey summer retreat of Peter Pan author Sir JM Barrie which inspired his most famous work has gone on the market with a seven-figure price tag.
For almost a decade around the turn of the 1900s, the Angus-born playwright owned Black Lake Cottage on Farnham’s Tilford Road.
He invited the boys of his London friends, the Llewelyn Davies family to stay there and their adventures in the woodlands near the cottage are thought to have inspired Barrie to write The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island in 1901.
Less than an hour by train from London, Black Lake Cottage was owned by Barrie from 1901 to 1908 and the author’s wife, Mary Ansell documented the happy times spent there with the four youngsters who were brought to life in the pages of his famous fairtyale as the Lost Boys of Neverland.
Agents Strutt and Parker are marketing six-bedroom Lobswood House – part of the larger historic country house that included Barrie’s retreat – for a cool £1.35 million and say the property retains “great charm and character”.
Complete with outdoor swimming pool, the house was extended in 2015 to provide two extra bedrooms and the company describes it most enchanting room as the vaulted principal bedroom with views over well-established gardens.
The Victorian house was previously used as a hotel and children’s home before being split into three in the 1970s.
Sitting in one and a half acres of land, it is on the edge of Bourne Wood where the boys – George, John, Peter and Michael – went to play as pirates.
It is thought the property name is derived from the character Lob in Barrie’s Dear Brutus.
A plaque placed by Waverley Borough Council on the wall of the property recognises the connection to its famous former owner.
Current owners Mark and Annabel Jermyn aim to downsize after bringing up their family there, and say the property has given them three decades of wonderful memories.
Last year, the Notting Hill home of the Davies family was marketed with a price tag of almost £1.4m.
The two-bedroomed flat in Kensington Park Gardens was where the Kirriemuir-born writer first met the boys during outings with their nanny, Mary Hodgson, sparking the friendship which would lead to Barrie becoming known by them as Uncle Jim.
A Barrie rarity
The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island was a photo-storybook created by Barrie in 1901 – of which only a single copy now exists.
It featured the adventures of the Llewlyn Davies brothers George, Jack and Peter, with a cameo by their younger brother Michael and the Angus-born author’s St Bernard dog, Porthos in a supporting role.
It involved them being shipwrecked on an island, where they lived in the wild and encountered pirates and exotic wild animals.
More than 30 photographs photos make up the bulk of the book, with the only two copies given to Arthur Davies and his wife, Sylvia.
Arthur misplaced his copy on a train shortly after Barrie gifted it to him, and Sylvia’s surviving copy, which came back to Barrie following her death in 1910, is held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
