The Visit Medway website [visit
link] tells us:
"Eastgate House is a grade one
listed building of exceptional interest. It was built in the late 1590s by Sir
Peter Buck, Clerk of the Cheque at Chatham Dockyard and is an excellent example
of an Elizabethan town house.
Subsequently five generations of
Bucks lived in the house and made their own changes and additions to the
building. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the house had many uses, notably
as a girls' school. It features as Westgate in Dickens' novel, Pickwick Papers
and as the Nun's House in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
The house is set in its own gardens
and the site also encompasses an annexe building and cottage designed by Sir Guy
Dawber in the 1920s. In addition, it is home to the Swiss chalet where Dickens
used to write. This was moved to Eastgate in the 1960s and was previously sited
at nearby Gad’s Hill, where Dickens lived from 1856 until his death in
1870.
In the late 19th century the house
was bought by the Corporation of Rochester and turned into the city museum. In
the 1970s the building became the Charles Dickens’ Centre, which closed in
2004.
Eastgate House is currently used
for the following activities:
• art exhibitions of contemporary
and traditional art;
• local history exhibitions supported by Medway Archives
and
Local Studies Centre and the City of Rochester Society;
• weddings and
civil ceremonies;
• educational visits for such subjects as history or
drama;
• special events such as Heritage Open Days and the summer and
Christmas Dickens Festivals."
Eastgate House is a Grade I listed
building with the entry at the English Heritage website [visit
link] telling us:
"Eastgate House 24.10.50 GV I
Formerly a large private town house, now a museum. Substantially of 1590-1,
built by Sir Peter Buck, Clerk of the Acts in the Navy Board, extended and
refurbished in the C17; it is possible that the house incorporates some earlier
work. Main range of brick; side elevation and rear wings brick and timber
framed; some rubble ragstone. Kent tile roofs. Plan: the removal of internal
partitions in the C19 and the likely demolition of a range to the E makes
reconstruction of the original plan uncertain. Ground floor hall entered by a
porch (S) probably into a through passage (opposing entries in situ, screen
removed); one room to the left (W) with high status chambers above served by an
S stair turret (which forms an important element in the main front) although
both turret and W rooms appear to belong to a slightly different building
programme to the main range (see change in plinth details).
These rooms are largely
timber-framed and the side elevation (W) with much jettying forms a secondary
show front towards the street. To the right of the hall is another room. A long
set of windows in the rear wall, along with a rubble plinth, extend beyond the
line of the present end (E) wall into what is now a low lean-to, and this must
indicate that the house originally extended to the E. Until the addition of the
C17 stairs (situated to the rear of the former through-passage and contained
within one of 3 separately gabled wings all of the same date), it is difficult
to see how the upper floors of the E and of the house were adequately served and
it is probable that the now demolished E part of the house contained a second S
stair turret balancing that mentioned above and thereby forming a roughly
symmetrical S front.
Exterior: S front: 3 storeys and
attic. Asymmetrical. 2 storeyed porch is flanked by a gabled bay. The porch has
a hipped roof, 1st floor windows to S and E (2 lights with double-ovolo moulded
brick surround, mullion and transom); pediment over doorway with pilasters on
panelled plinths; stone 4-centred arch has shields in spandrels and large bar
stops set high. Each bay has a tripartite window arrangement; 2-light windows to
each floor connect with a central 3-storeyed projecting bay, polygonal to left,
canted to right, giving continuous glazing across the wings. All windows with
timber mullions, transoms and surrounds; most of the woodwork is renewed. To the
left the polygonal stair turret with single- light windows under cambered
arches, all-brick moulded, moulded string-courses between floors, and projecting
gabled roof. To the left again, the plain end wall of the street front, plain
brick, but containing a plaque with the herladic device of the Bucj family and
2-light window under hood mould to ground. High Street elevation: 3 storeys and
attic, all jettied, with 2 gables. Brick end well corbelled and moulded with a
decorative zig-zag vertical strip to 1st floor.
Uninterrupted 14 light ground floor
window with king mullion, set high under jetty. Similar to 1st and 2nd floors
but here broken by - at 1st floor - a 7-light oriel on console brackets and - on
2nd floor - 2 3- light oriels. These long ranks of windows set very high to each
floor are presumably intended to light the fine plaster ceilings: see interior.
2-light gable wall windows, decorated bargeboarding and apex and pendants. To
the left the side wall of the W rear wing considerably later (see masonry joint
and absence of plinth); brick, 2 storeys, with 4-light windows to each floor
(that to the 1st floor slightly projecting). Diamond leading. String course.
rear: 3 gabled wings, half-hipped upper storeys and attic; 2, 3 and 4-light
windows to 1st floor (that to E wing with large mullions, lighting stairs),
2-light windows to gable walls.
Interior: although considerable
amounts of woodwork, including the porch inner door, are brought from elsewhere,
there is some fine plasterwork, and the stone fireplaces appear to be in situ.
Hall: wall panelling, fire- surround with pilasters, panelled overmantel with
caryatids (not in situ) and inserted ceiling beams. Doorways with cyma moulded
surrounds and bar stops set high. Right-hand room with ovllo- moulded ceiling
beams; wall panelling, fireplace with stone surround with pulvinated frieze, and
Jacobean overmantel not in situr. Open well stairs, C17, turned balusters,
square-section newels with finials. 1st floor. Right-hand room with dentil
cornice, some panelling and simple fire surround with fluted pilasters. Chamber
above hall with fine fire surround (not in situ) with fluted term pilasters and
elaborate panelled overmantel. Wall panelling. Between these two rooms is a
pierced wooden panel designed to distribute borrowed light: evidence for others
exist elsewhere.
The most significant interiors are
in the W rooms where good plaster ceilings survive to all floors. These are
single-ribbed with a variety of geometric patterns (quatrefoils, diamonds,
squares etc) with stylised foliage, and heraldic devices. The heraldry (and a
rebus to 2nd floor) indicate that they date from Buck's time (ie the 1590s) and
as such are a remarkable set of early plasterwork ceilings. Stone fireplaces
with 4-centred arches, dated 1590 and 1591. In the attic is some simple
line-drawn patternwork on plaster (much remains to be exposed). Side purlin
roof; the High Street range is separately roofed."