It was 160 years ago this month that Beatrix Potter, the creator of characters including Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck, was born in South Kensington in London.

Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28th July, 1866 – the daughter of Rupert and Helen (and later older sister of brother Walter Bertram).

The Potters, who had come from the north of England, lived in a relatively well-to-do home at 2 Bolton Gardens.

Her father was a qualified barrister but pursued instead his love for photography and art. Beatrix was thus exposed somewhat at an early age to the art world and spent most of her spare time as a child expressing herself through her drawing and painting.

As well as being taken on trips to galleries, she also accompanied her parents on holidays to Scotland and the Lake District, the latter a place she first visited in 1882 and one which became an important source of inspiration for her work.

While she’d had some earlier success in selling her pictures for use on Christmas cards, her career really took off in 1902 when The Tale of Peter Rabbit – which she had initially distributed among family and friends after being rejected by publishers – was finally picked up by Frederick Warne & Co. The initial print run of 8,000 sold out and her literary career was launched.

Warne went on to publish six of her and Potter used the profits to buy the 17th-century Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey village in the Lake District. The publisher’s son Norman was also engaged to Potter briefly but tragically died only four weeks after she had accepted his marriage proposal.

She married a Lakes District solicitor, William Heelis, in 1913 and, having lived at the South Kensington property until that time, moved to Castle Cottage in Near Sawrey in the Lake District where she lived with him until her death in 1943.

A plaque marks the site of the property in South Kensington where she was born (the house itself was destroyed in the Blitz).

We’ll take a more in-depth look at Potter’s London connections in an upcoming post.