GAD’S HILL PLACE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 1 September 1923, Page 8

GAD’S HILL PLACE

DICKENS’ OLD HOME

It was recently cabled that Gad’s Hill Place had been put up to public auction, but that it was passed in at £5(100.

For years Dickens had his eyo on tlie place. He happened to be walking past it one day with W. H. Wills, lu sub-editor on Household -.Words, an told him how as a small pioy he had thought it the most beautiful house lit- had ever seen, probably because of the- cedars there. His father used to take him to look at it, and to say that if lie ever grow up to bo a clever man, ho might own the house, or one like it.

And so through all the intervening years Dickens never passed the house without looking to see if it were to lie let or to be sold. By a curious co-in-cidence Wills, on the day following tho walk with Dickens, dined with a lady who told him that Gad’s Hill Place was for sale.

Dickons jumped at the opportunity, but his enthusiasm did not outrun his discretion. Negotiations began at the close of 1885. “They wouldn’t,” he wrote, “take £I7OO for the Gad’s Hill property, but ‘finally’ wanted £IBOO. i have finally offered £1750. It will require an expenditure of about £3OO more before yielding £IOO a year.” 'The actual purchase money was £1790, and eventually Dickens moved into tho homo of his bovhobd’s dream.

“At tho present moment,” lie wrote, after moving in, “I am on my Jittlo Kentish property (not in top hoots and not particularly prejudiced that I know of) looking on as pretty a view out of my studio window as you will find in a long day’s English ride. My little placo is a grave red bride house, which I have added to and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so, that it is as pleasantly irregular and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas as the most hopeful Jnan could possibly desire. Tho robbery was committed before the door on the man with the treasure, and Fa 1 staff ran away from the identical spot of ground now covered by the room in which I write. Tlie whole stupendous property is on tho old Dover Road.’

Dickens threw himself into tho place with accustomed energy. He would walk home from London, sometimes durnig the night. He sank a ‘deep avoll there, more than 200 feet deep, to get water from tho bed of chalk below. He tunnelled under the Dover Road to connect the two parts of his property, and in the further nnrt stoqd the chalet where his last lines were written. He added a conservatory to the house. In tho garden he put up a. sundial made from a baluster of old Rochester Bridge. Here Tie wrote “Great Expectations,” many of the scenes of which are drawn, from tho neighbourhood of Gad’s Hill; and here the unfinished mystery of “Edwin Drooel” was begun. What is to become of Gad’s Hill? Since Dickons’ day it lias been carefully tended by owners and tenants who have respected his memory. If it is not to become a national possession, and this is hardly possible/ in these stringent times, ono can only hope that the new owner or the new tenant will not' be of that much-to-bo pitied class who “can’t read Dickens,” and count his association with Gad’s Hill Place tho least valuable asset of his old home. -