Qualla: Peter Pan statue

Peter Pan statue: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chmee2, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 1 May 1912, children arriving in Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks discovered something new. By the south-western tail of the Serpentine, near the little bay, a bronze boy stood on top of a tree stump playing a thin pipe. Around the stump's base were fairies, squirrels, mice, and rabbits cast in metal. The day before there had been nothing there. The author J. M. Barrie had arranged everything in secret, on the night of 30 April. He erected the statue without fanfare, without ceremony, and - crucially - without permission. So that, as he put it, "it might appear to children that the fairies had put it in place overnight." The next morning he published the announcement in The Times. The boy who would never grow up had arrived in the garden by magic, and the most famous newspaper in Britain had been recruited to confirm it.

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Image: Chmee2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Peter Pan statue: The Sculptor Who Disappointed the Author

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0. The statue stands about fourteen feet high. The bronze boy on top - life-size for a child of about eight - blows a pipe that has been interpreted as a flute, a trumpet, or pan pipes. The sides of the stump are alive with small figures: squirrels and rabbits, mice and fairies pres...

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Image: Rodhullandemu | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peter Pan statue: Where Peter Lands

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin McLaughlin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The location was specific. In Barrie's 1902 book The Little White Bird, Peter Pan flies out of his nursery window and lands in Kensington Gardens at this exact spot - by the little bay on the south-western side of the tail of the Serpentine. The Gardens had inspired Barrie's stor...

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Image: Colin McLaughlin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peter Pan statue: Brussels, Newfoundland, Liverpool

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shhewitt, CC BY-SA 4.0. Frampton kept the moulds. Between 1913 and his death in 1928, he produced a series of small bronze reproductions; one sold in Scotland in 2016 for £60,000. He also cast six other full-size versions, which he distributed around the world like a slow international gift. In 1924 he ...

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Image: Shhewitt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peter Pan statue: Perth, Toronto, New Jersey

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dnbosiris, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three more casts crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific. On 10 June 1929 - again overnight, in the Kensington Gardens tradition - Rotary International installed a Peter Pan in Queens Gardens, Perth, Western Australia, marking the centenary of the state's founding as the Swan River ...

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Image: Dnbosiris | CC BY-SA 3.0

Peter Pan statue: Pipes Still Playing

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Love Art Nouveau, CC BY 2.0. Other sculptors have made other Peter Pans. Paul Montfort cast one for Melbourne in 1925. Mary Elizabeth Cook made a fountain version for Columbus, Ohio in 1927. Charles Andrew Hafner produced a Carl Schurz Park sculpture for New York City in 1928. There are Peters at the Mearnsk...

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Image: Love Art Nouveau | CC BY 2.0