Bleak House, Broadstairs

The house was the site of the North Cliff Battery and was used as a coastal station for observing maritime activity.

[1][2] Charles Dickens holidayed at Fort House in the 1850s and 1860s, and wrote David Copperfield during his time there.

What can be certain is that the house held a special attraction for Dickens, and was the residence he "most desired" in his most favourite of watering places, Broadstairs.

In the novel Sophy Laurie, published in 1865, William Carew Hazlitt writes: It is at Broadstairs they are staying; in the big, bleak house that stands alone on a peak of the chalk cliff, as if it were some sentinel set over the rovers up and down the sea.

For much of the 20th century, Bleak House was in two quite distinct parts, serving as both a private residence and a Dickens memorial museum.