Gad's Hill

A carte-de-visite showing Gad's Hill (sometimes Gads Hill), where Charles Dickens lived and died. The carte was produced shortly after the author's death in 1870. A caption in the lower margin reads: 'Gads Hill / The home of the late Charles Dickens.'

Dickens first saw the house when he was a young boy. He often walked from his home in Chatham to gaze at the house, imagining that he would one day be able to live somewhere like it. He later wrote: '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.'

Many years later, after he had become a wildly successful author, he discovered that the house was for sale and bought if for £1790 (about £200,000 in today's money) from Eliza Lynn (later the writer Eliza Lynn Linton). His original intention was to let it but he ended up moving into the house himself in June 1857.

The house has been an independent prep school since 1924.

Photographed by The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.

Although the mount is marked 'Copyright' I can find no evidence that the image was ever entered at Stationers' Hall.