The house is on top of the cliff on Fort Road and was renamed Bleak House after his death, in his honour. However, there is no evidence that it formed the basis of the fictional Bleak House, particularly as it is so far from the location of the fictional house. Dickens stayed with his family at this house (then called Fort House) for at least one month every summer from 1839 until 1851. The house named Bleak House in Broadstairs is not the original. 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. 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. Some people believe that the house from which Dickens took his inspiration is far distant from Broadstairs. There has been much dispute over the truth of the claim. Somebody asserted that it was the Bleak House referred to in Dickens' 1853 novel, and the name stuck. The Wikipedia page for the house says, somewhat mealy-mouthedly:įort House was dubbed Bleak House in the early part of the 20th century. Dickens actually stayed in that house for a while, and wrote David Copperfield there, but at that time it was called Fort House not Bleak House.

Dickens's novel Bleak House shares its name with an actual house in the English seaside town of Broadstairs.

Bleak house novel