Re: Life and times in Chatham, Kent (Mr Piper)

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Wed, 5 Feb 1997 15:28:39 -0100 

My dear Glenn,

  We have much in common, you and I.  I hope you love
Chatham and Rochester as much as I do.
  Our house, when we lived there, was number 2 Ordnance
Terrace, but I understand more houses have been put up since,
and the street has been renumbered.  The house is now number
11.  There is - ahem - a plaque, commemorating the residence
there of a budding Inimitable.  I think it must have been as
early as January 1817 that my mother and father moved to
Chatham and to Ordnance Terrace.  I would have been very nearly
five years old.  We moved to St Mary's Place during the
summer of 1821, when I was nine.  Alas, my memory does not
supply the name of the family that succeeded us at Ordnance
Terrace.
  The railway most certainly was not built when we were
there.  Opposite the terrace was a cornfield, but for all
the children it was a playground.  Imagine my
consternation when I returned, many years later, to find
my playground swallowed by a vast pit, full of engines,
smoke, steam, cinders, ashes and noise!
  I am tempted to think you will be something less than
astonished to learn that, during my childhood, Fort Pitt
was a fort.  Remember, when we moved to Chatham, Napoleon
Buonaparte had been finally defeated only two years
previously.  While Europe trembled at his frown, we in
England, my father told me, feared invasion.  And Chatham,
as a major military base, had more to fear than most towns.
That is why it was ringed by forts, Fort Pitt one of them.
I belive it may have become a military hospital at a later
date.


Faithfully yours,


Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>I grew up in Chatham and spent some time at my grandparents at the top of
> Ordnance
>Street near the railway station.I know you lived near the station for a
> while,can you
>tell me the exact address and date?Do you have any memories of living in this
> part of
>Chatham?Was the railway built when you were living there?Did you go on any
> railway
>journeys as a boy?Do you know who moved into the house after you?I think there
> is a
>plaque on the house now but I am not sure.Just up the road is Fort Pitt School
> but I
>believe it was a hospital in Victorian times?Opposite is now Victoria Gardens
> but i do
>not believe it was there during your childhood?Any information will be
> gratefully
>received..many thanks
>
>yours Glenn
>
>
>Please put MR Piper in the Subject line of your reply if possible.
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author