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Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place, was the country home of Charles...

Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era. The house was built in 1780 for a former Mayor of Rochester, Thomas Stephens, opposite the Sir John Falstaff Public House. 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, Charles 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 Mrs 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