Dickens’s £3m home up for sale

THE seaside mansion where Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield is for sale for £3.1million.

Perched high on the cliffs of Broadstairs, Kent, the novelist spent every summer there with his family for more than 20 years and also planned his novel Bleak House at the mansion.

The Grade II-listed house, with seven bedrooms, was built in 1801 and damaged by fire in 2006, but had a £40,000 restoration. It was originally known as Fort House, as it was the home of the fort captain during the Napoleonic Wars, but was renamed Bleak House after Dickens’s death in 1870.

The study still has the writing desk where Dickens sat in front of the bay window with a view of the sea.

Estate agent Terence Painter said: ‘This has to be one of the country’s most renowned homes as here, in a small study looking straight out across the sea, Charles Dickens wrote the greater part of his most famous novel, David Copperfield.

‘The owners have extensively restored this property which retains a multitude of grand and quirky features.’