Flint Cottage from Barrie's Bank

Image: © Sean Davis Taken: 5 Sep 2010

Flint Cottage was the home of the novelist and poet George Meredith (1828 - 1909) from 1867 until his. Of all the people associated with Box Hill, none had a better feel for the place than him. He wrote: "I am every morning at the top of Box Hill - as its flower, its bird, its prophet. I drop down the moon on one side, I draw up the sun on t'other. I breathe fine air. I shout ha ha to the gates of the world. Then I descend and know myself a donkey for doing it". He built a small timber chalet up in the steep garden where he done much of his work. He was often visited by J.M.Barrie, who after Meredith's death wrote a fanciful essay in which he imagined the old man sitting on the crest of the hill which rises in front of Flint Cottage, chuckling at the sight of his own funeral cortege solemnly accompanying an empty coffin to the cemetery at Dorking. Barrie himself is commemorated by Barrie's Bank, just outside Flint Cottage, where the playwright is said to have sat before daring to approach the great writer. This is also on the route of the London Green Belt Way. To view a photo of the timber chalet see https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6437316

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