Hill Place

Hill Place is a grade II listedGeorgian country villa located near the village of Swanmore in Hampshire, England.

Today, Hill Place is set within 20 acres (81,000 m²) of well-tended parkland, beyond which is an apple farm and further afield the Meon Valley. It is hired out as a venue for weddings, private receptions and corporate events.

In 2011, Hill Place was the subject of a Channel 4 television documentary presented by hotelier Ruth Watson as part of her Country House Rescue series.

Richard Goodlad

Richard Goodlad built Hill Place in about 1790. It is thought that Sir John Soane was the architect as the house is very similar to some of his well-known buildings and he did have connections to the Goodlad family.

Richard Goodlad was born in 1755 in London. His father was Richard Goodlad and his mother was Elizabeth Martin. At this time according to the baptismal records the family lived in Old Mile End Town in London. Richard had two elder brothers William Martin Goodlad (1746–1773) and Anthony Bennett Goodlad (1749-1783). ) . Both of them worked for the East India Company and in 1771 when Richard was sixteen he joined his brothers in India. Some detail of the three brothers in India is given in the Manuscripts of Sir Robert Palk who was the Governor of Madras and a close friend of William Martin Goodlad. Richard worked as a merchant for the East India Company in Bengal from 1771 until 1801. In the later part of his career he lived in a large house in Baruipur in West Bengal. The artist François Balthazar Solvyns painted a picture of Richard’s house in 1793 which is shown at left.

Gads Hill Place

Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era. Today the building is the independent Gad's Hill School.

The house was built in 1780 for a former Mayor of Rochester, Thomas Stephens, opposite the present Sir John Falstaff Public House. Gad's Hill is where Falstaff commits the robbery that begins Shakespeare's Henriad trilogy (Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V).

Dickens

Charles Dickens first saw the mansion when he was 9 years old in 1821, when his father John Dickens told Charles that if he worked hard enough, one day he would own it or just such a house. As a boy, Charles Dickens would often walk from Chatham to Gads Hill Place as he wished to see it again and again as an image of his possible future. Dickens was later to write, " I used to look at it as a wonderful Mansion (which God knows it is not) when I was a very odd little child with the first faint shadows of all my books in my head - I suppose." Thirty-five years later, after Dickens had risen to fame and wealth, he discovered that the house was for sale and bought it for £1790 in March 1856 from fellow writer Eliza Lynn (later known as novelist Mrs. Eliza Lynn Linton). Initially Dickens bought the house as an investment, intending to let it, but changed his mind and used it instead as a country retreat, moving into the house in June 1857.