Charles Dickens Centre: Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. In 1817 his father, who worked as a clerk for the Royal Navy, moved the whole family to Chatham where he took up a post in the Royal Dockyard. The Dickens household was based first in Ordnance Terrace and later at St Mary's Place, on The Brook.
Although young Charles moved to London along with the rest of the family in 1822, he had by that time developed a strong feeling of affection for the Medway area. In 1856, as an enormously successful and well-known author, he bought Gad's Hill Place in Higham, just outside Rochester. Until his death in 1870, he became a familiar figure walking energetically around the Medway Towns, to and from Gravesend Station, or out on the Hoo Peninsula.
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