The exterior of Robert Street, Westminster, London © Photo by Rebecca Lilley
Two views of JM Barrie in his flat with its Edwin Lutyens-designed bookshelves.
Delft tiles, probably chosen by Lutyens, backed the fireplace there. All photos by kind permission of the building’s owner
An Unexpected Discovery of Photos of JM Barrie in his London Flat, Altered by Edwin Lutyens, Provides Invaluable Visual Evidence of its Interior
By Rebecca Lilley
According to the exhibition catalogue for the Lutyens exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, the architect made alterations in 1917 to playwright and novelist JM Barrie’s flat at Adelphi Terrace House in Adelphi, a district in Westminster, London. Barrie and Lutyens first met circa 1899 at the Lutyens-designed Berrydown Court in Hampshire and became lifelong friends. Lutyens designed the sets for Barrie’s plays Quality Street, which premiered in 1901, and Peter Pan, first performed in 1904. But the Trust held no further information nor images of Barrie’s Adelphi Terrace flat.
Located behind The Strand beside the Thames, Adelphi Terrace was designed by brothers Robert and James Adam, who had in mind the “raising of a great ‘palace’ upon the mud banks of wasteland in the Durham Yard area of Westminster”. The project was completed but in 1936 the main, Thames-facing part of the building was demolished and replaced in 1938 by a new Art Deco one designed by Stanley Hamp. On my commute to work along the Strand, I became intrigued by the original flat and was eager to find out more about it. It happened to be on the market as a rental office space then, and, with the kind permission of London estate agent Monmouth Dean, I was able to visit it in the spring of 2022.
I am grateful to Paul Waite who identified a 1907 drawing in the RIBA Collections of architectural drawings for a fourth-floor flat in Adelphi Terrace House at Nos 1-3 Robert Street, originally conceived as three townhouses. However, the completed Adam design saw Nos 1 and 2 subdivided into flats; No 3 was occupied by Robert Adam. The drawing’s entry mentioned that Barrie’s flat, which he acquired in 1917, had previously belonged to Joseph Pennell. Barrie definitely lived at No 3 but whether his home also spanned the fourth floors of Nos 1 and 2 is unknown. Rather puzzling though was a further drawing of 1918, noting that Barrie’s flat was on the third (not fourth) floor.
When I visited Barrie’s flat I was curious to find out if Lutyens’s alterations remained intact. The building is Grade II*-listed and sits within the Adelphi Conservation Area. Rhys Evans of Monmouth Dean explained that renowned architects and heritage consultants Purcell began to modernise and refurbish Nos 2-3 Robert Street in 2016. Drawings held by Purcell confirmed that Barrie’s flat was indeed on the fourth floor and included a large studio – his office – affording fabulous views of the Thames.
I discovered that the fabric and decorative scheme of Lutyens’s alterations had been lost long ago. Fortunately, the plan form was largely intact, which made it easier to identify the location of Lutyens’s infrastructure (as illustrated in red on the 1918 RIBA drawing). The layout of Barrie’s studio – a design much used in other Lutyens works, such as at The Salutation in Kent – was zoned into three spaces furnished with freestanding bookshelves. A large inglenook fireplace had been inserted into the west wall. By craning our necks out of the large windows, we could see the chimney stacks, which appear to have been examples of Lutyens’s tall Arts and Crafts chimneys seen, for example, at Goddards in Surrey. Unfortunately, the stacks have been mostly dismantled probably because there are another two unusually large fireplaces in the room. These would have made the inglenook and stacks, which take up so much space, redundant, especially with central heating in use. Barrie’s flat has the best views at No 3, which is entirely fitted out as offices. The ground and first floors boast intact Adam brothers ceilings.
If the Lutyens interior seemed impossible to visualise beyond the plan-form – at first – an exciting discovery proved otherwise: on being shown into an unassuming room on the same visit, what should we spy but a pair of framed photographs showing Barrie in the flat. The people currently renting the space had chanced on the photos in the flat but knew nothing about their origins or what they recorded. There could be no doubt that the interior shown was the Adelphi Terrace House flat. The first image showed Barrie next to the inglenook, putting a book on one of the (clearly) Lutyens-designed bookcases.
Later research done by Paul, who consulted The Story of JMB – A Biography by Denis Mackail, stated that the bookcase also served as a partition screening a “personal kitchen” in the corner of the room. Presumably servants brought food cooked in a large kitchen serving the building to Barrie’s flat. The second image shows Barrie in the doorway of the studio; a fireplace backed by Delft tiles, perhaps chosen by Lutyens, and a piano are also visible. The chimneys and bookcases are easily identifiable as Lutyens’s work, while some wood panelling could have been selected by him, too. Although the surprise discovery of the photos provides the best visual evidence of Lutyens’s involvement with Adelphi Terrace House to date, the RIBA drawings give the exact location of the flat and reveal that it survived the regrettable demolition of the main part of the Adam brothers’ building. The owners of No 3 have kindly given The Lutyens Trust digital copies of these.
Paul put me on to several biographies of Barrie, which shed more light on his flat. They also reveal that before 1917 Barrie had lived in the third-floor flat – the source of the mistaken description on the drawing that his flat was on the third floor. The books also stated that Barrie undertook the decoration himself, which explains the interior’s Victorian feel with its dark wood walls and mishmash of antiques. Interestingly one book mentions another former occupant with theatrical connections – theatre director and costume designer Edith “Edy” Craig, daughter of actress Ellen Terry.
Our heartfelt thanks go to Rhys for enabling our visit and helping us to obtain copies of the photos of the flat.
Anyone interested in reading the extracts of these biographies pertaining to Barrie’s flat can email Rebecca via rebecca.e.lilley@outlook.com and request a copy of her notes. The RIBA drawings can be viewed online at ribapix.com by searching for “Adelphi Terrace”.