Gads Hill Place

Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era.

It was built in 1780, it is located in the English town of Higham, in the county of Kent and is a listed building of Grade I.

Origins and History

Charles Dickens first saw the mansion when he was 9 years old in 1821, when his father John Dickens told Charles that if he worked hard enough, one day he would own it or just such a house. As a boy, Dickens would often walk from Chatham to Gads Hill Place as he wished to see it again and again as an image of his possible future. Dickens was later to write, "I used to look at it as a wonderful Mansion (which God knows it is not) when I was a very odd little child with the first faint shadows of all my books in my head. I suppose."

Thirty-five years later, after Dickens had risen to fame and wealth, he discovered that the house was for sale and bought it for £1790 in March 1856 from fellow writer Eliza Lynn (later known as novelist Mrs. Eliza Lynn Linton). Initially Dickens bought the house as an investment, intending to let it, but changed his mind and used it instead as a country retreat, moving into the house in June 1857.

Dickens had bookshelves installed in his study at Gads Hill Place, some of which contained dummy books the titles of which he invented to reflect his own prejudices and opinions, including Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep, History of a Short Chancery Suit in twenty-one volumes.

Dickens was visited at Gad's Hill Place in 1857 by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who was invited for two weeks but who stayed for five. Other guests included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Allston Collins, Wilkie Collins, Marcus Stone, H.F. Chorley, Percy Fitzgerald, John Leech, Alexander William Kinglake, William Powell Frith and Charles Fechter.

In 1864 Fechter gave Dickens a prefabricated two-storey Swiss chalet as a Christmas present. Dickens had it assembled on land he owned on the opposite side of the Rochester High Road. Later, he had a brick-lined tunnel dug between the house's front lawn and the chalet.

The chalet has been preserved and was moved to Eastgate House in Rochester High Street, Rochester, as a memorial to the writer.

The house remained Dickens's country home until his death in 1870, dying as he did of a stroke on a couch in the dining room there. Much of the contents of the house were auctioned after his death.

Gads Hill Place was bought by Charles Dickens, Jr. after his father's death, but he was forced to give it up in 1879 because of his own ill-health and financial difficulties. The house was bought in 1890 by the Hon. Francis Law Latham, the then Advocate-General of Bombay.

Today

In 1924, the building becomes a private school and in 2006, the school management announces its intention to convert the house into a museum by 2012.

In June 2008 the house was shown in the Channel 4 TV docudrama Dickens' Secret Lover, presented by actor Charles Dance, on Dickens's affair with the actress Ellen Ternan during the last 13 years of his life.

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