Rochester
Ancient city at the mouth of the Medway
Charles Dickens loved Kent and Rochester in particular. Although he never lived here he spent part of his childhood in the adjoining town of Chatham, and once said, "If anybody present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do". He remarked about Rochester, 'I peeped about its old corners with interest and wonder when I was a very little child".
Not surprising that this ancient city he knew so well from his earliest memories, is a constantly recurring theme in so many of his stories.
Rochester is described under various pseudonyms. In Edwin Drood it appears as Cloisterham, ". . . and no meeting dwelling-place for anyone with hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthy flavour throughout from the cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars".
The city appears under its own name in David Copperfield, Great Expectations and in Pickwick Papers. Rochester (with Chatham) is also Mudfog in The Mudfog Papers and the Dullborough of The Uncommercial Traveller. In Sketches by Boz, Dickens calls the city Winglebury and describes it thus, "It has a long straggling High Street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town Hall, half way up--a market place--a cage--an assembly room--a church--a theatre--a library--an inn--a pump--and a post office".
Rochester must be seen on foot, but before you explore this "long straggling High Street" first make your way to the bridge and enjoy the view as Mr. Pickwick did (whilst waiting for his breakfast at the Bull) with to your left, the "ruined wall, broken in many places" and behind it "the ancient castle, its towers roofless, and its massive walls crumbling away, but telling us proudly of its old might and strength, as when, seven hundred years ago, it rang with the clash of arms, or resounded with the noise of feasting and revelry".
Now make your way towards the High Street, thinking as you do of all the ordinary and extraordinary people over the centuries who have followed this route from before, and including Chaucer's Pilgrims.
The Bull Inn
One of the first buildings you encounter on the right is the famous Royal Victoria & Bull Hotel. Dickens stayed here many times and the bed he used can now be seen in Bleak House at Broadstairs. In the "Great Winglebury Duel" (Sketches by Boz), the Inn appears as the Blue Lion and Stomach Warmer and Dickens describes it as, "a large house with red brick and stone front. A pretty spacious hall, ornamented with evergreen plants, terminates in a perspective view of the bar, and a glass case in which are displayed a choice variety of delicacies ready for dressing . . . opposite doors lead to the 'Coffee' and 'Commercial' rooms; and a great, wide, rambling staircase . . . conducts to galleries of bedrooms, and labyrinths of sitting rooms".
The opening scenes of Pickwick Papers take place in The Bull and Pip celebrates his Great Expectations in the so named Blue Boar Inn, staying overnight here years later when he returns to meet Estella.
Guildhall
Opposite the Bull is the Guildhall, built in 1687 and now housing a museum. In Great Expectations it features as the Town Hall where Pip was bound apprentice to the blacksmith Joe Gargery "The Hall was a queer place, I thought with higher pews in it than a church".
College Gate
Continue a few yards further along the High Street to the cross roads with Northgate and on your right hand side is the fifteenth century College Gate that features prominently in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens describes it as the, "old stone gate-house crossing the (Cathedral) close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene". This is the lair of Mr. John Jasper, choirmaster of the Cathedral and scheming uncle of Edwin Drood.
Beside the gateway is the official residence of Jasper's landlord, Mr. Tope the verger and this is where Mr. Datchery, the enigmatic stranger to Cloisterham lodged. He thought it, "partook of the character of a cool dungeon" with "chambers of no describable shape". Today it is a comfortable restaurant with a wealth of exposed beams and fine linenfold panelling, where you can enjoy (among other things) the modern day equivalent of Bella Wilfer's "Lumps of Delight".
Cathedral
Make your way through Jasper's Gate and up the hill, the Cathedral, second oldest in England after Canterbury, is on your left. It is much as Mr. Jingle's observation in Pickwick Papers, ". . . Old Cathedral, too--earthy smell--pilgrims' feet worn away the old steps--little saxon doors--confessionals like money-takers boxes at theatres--queer customs those monks. . . ." Little has changed except that a "blun" spire was added in 1904 and there never were any confessionals.
The Cathedral plays a major role in Dickens's last unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. There are many descriptions of it in varying moods; one of the most succinct is spoken by Mr. Grewgious as he looked into the Cathedral from the open West Door. . . . "Dear me" he said, "it's like looking down the throat of Old Time".
Minor Canon Row
A little further up the hill, and immediately behind the Cathedral is Minor Canon Row. This appears in Dickens's story of "The Seven Poor Travellers" as, ". . . a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements . . . they had old little porches over the doors, like sounding boards over pulpits".
In Edwin Drood it becomes Minor Canon Corner, "a quiet place in the shadow of the Cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks, the echoing footsteps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell, or the roll of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render more quiet than absolute silence".
There is a plaque on a house in the Row, known by Dickens in his childhood to contain a wonderful dining-room closet such as that in which Mrs. Crisparkle (mother of the athletic Canon) kept so many extraordinary revivers and remedies: Constantia and home-made biscuits, pickles, spices and jams, oranges and sugar and sweet wine and home-made cordials.
Vines Park
Walk to the end of Canon Row, turn right and make your way up the hill passed Orial House, then turn left into Vines Park. This is the Monk's vineyard where Edwin Drood meets the old opium woman and is disquieted by her searching questions. It is also the scene of Edwin's sad discussion with Rosa Bud concerning their position and future prospects.
The walk through Vines Park is the route that Pip took in Great Expectations on his last visit to Miss Havisham.
"The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet, echoing courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old monks once had their refectories and gardens . . . the rooks, as they hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare, high trees of the Priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed, and that Estella was gone out of it forever".
Restoration House
Facing you as you walk through Vines Park is Restoration House, so called because Charles II stayed here in 1600 on his way to reclaim England's throne. In Great Expectations Dickens used it as the model for Miss Havisham's Satis House and has Pip describe it thus, "I had stopped to look at the house as I passed, and its seared red-brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of the chimneys with its twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which I was the hero".
In the drawing-room at the back was spread Miss Havisham's dreadful wedding-feast with its canopy of cobwebs and mould, with spiders and mice as its wedding-guests. A faithful recreation of this scene is just one of the many tableaux to be enjoyed at the Dickens Centre in Eastgate House.
Eastgate House
Home of the Dickens Centre, could well have been in the author's mind when he was writing Pickwick Papers and created Westgate House, the boarding school for young ladies that witnessed the embarrassment of Messrs Pickwick and Weller.
In Edwin Drood Dickens transforms Eastgate House into, "the Nun's House, a venerable brick edifice," with a brass plate, "flashing forth the legend; 'Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton'."
In the grounds at the back of Eastgate House where Rosa was so terrified by Jasper's proposal, stands the original Swiss Chalet from Cads Hill, in which Dickens wrote among other things, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, and was at work on enlightening us about The Mystery of Edwin Drood, on the day before he died.
Mr. Pumblechook's Premises
As you leave Eastgate House through the wrought iron gateway, look directly across the High Street to the large, half timbered, gabled building occupying numbers 150 to 154. In Great Expectations, this was Mr. Pumblechook's premises, ". . . of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be". If you look up high between the gables you can make out the window of Pip's attic room where he bemoans it as having, ". . . a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my eyelashes". Pip thought Mr. Pumblechook, "must be a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop".
In The Mystery of Edwin Drood, this house appears as the home of Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer and, "the purest Jackass in Cloisterham". Dickens describes it as standing, ". . . in the High Street, over against the Nun's House, irregularly modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating generations found, more and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever and Plague".
Six Poor Travellers House
Turn right and walk back along the High Street towards the bridge. On the right-hand side, about halfway between Eastgate House and Jasper's Gate is Watts's Charity, one of the oldest buildings in Rochester. Built to carry out the bequest of Richard Watts a self-made man, who in the sixteenth century left money to befriend six poor travellers. The charity provided four pence plus free bed and board for one night. This tradition continued until 1940. Dickens immortalised it in one of his Christmas Stories by writing himself in as the seventh of "The Seven Poor Travellers". This restored almshouse featuring a number of small galleried Elizabethan bedrooms, is open on most afternoons between April and October, free of charge.
Crispin & Crispianus
Over the bridge, in what is technically Strood, on the north side of the London Road stands the ancient inn of Crispin and Crispianus. Dickens often stopped here for refreshment when on one of his long walks from Cads Hill, and he mentions the inn in his essay "Tramps" in The Uncommercial Traveller. In the Dickens Bar there is a collection of prints and old photographs and a brass relief plate that indicates the place where he would sit, enjoying a glass of ale or a little cold brandy and water, speaking little but taking in all that was going on around him.
A few yards down the hill, adjoining the church, once stood the workhouse from which came the pauper's funeral in Oliver Twist.
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