Charles Dickens' Gad's Hill Place in Kent will open to the general public for the first time this summer

The last home of Charles Dickens, Gad's Hill Place in Kent, a private property that his passionate fans besieged in his lifetime and ever since, will open to the general public for the first time this summer. Gad's Hill was the house near Rochester that Dickens first saw and coveted when he was a child, bought for £1,700 in 1856 when he was the world's most famous novelist, and where he died on a sofa in the dining room on 9 June 1870. The month-long public opening is a trial run for an ambitious plan to transform the house into a permanent museum. The house has been a school since the 1920s, and news of the opening, with original contents returning for the first time since they were scattered at auction after Dickens's death, is expected to attract fans from all over the world. Since 1870 it has only been open for occasional groups and special events