
Restoration House
With a National Art Pass you get
The more you see, the more we do.
The National Art Pass lets you enjoy free entry to hundreds of museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, while raising money to support them.
Restoration House as it exists today is the amalgamation of two medieval buildings which were combined in the late 16th or early 17th century to create a mansion house just outside the southeast corner of the city wall of Rochester.
It was neither a town house nor a country seat, but shared features of both. Over the past ten years the present owners of Restoration House have uncovered various parts of the decorative scheme from the time when the house served as an overnight base for the young Charles Stuart. These provide fascinating examples of fashionable mid-17th century Continental taste seen through provincial eyes at a time when such innovations had been quashed by Cromwell.
Charles Dickens was inspired to create Miss Havisham here.