This elaborate example of late Tudor brick architecture now houses the Dickens Centre which is open to the public. The entrance gates once stood in front of the Guildhall.

The garden to the rear was remade in 1983, the major feature being Dickens' chalet which was brought from Gad's Hill Place after his death. Its image is reflected in the two formal pools in the paved garden below, which is brightened by beds of seasonal planting. Through a gate in the north wall is an informal garden with a pergola walk and arbour.

In 2013 the Kent Gardens Trust performed a review of historical information relating to Eastgate House Gardens.

The review recomens the inclusion of Eastgate House Garden for inclusion on the local list of heritage assests for a number of reasons including age, rarity, and survival.

Taken from the review:

"SUMMARY OF HISTORIC INTEREST: A compartmentalised, interconnecting garden, part of which is laid out on the site of a late C18 to the early C19 (and probably earlier) garden surrounding a surviving late C16 townhouse. It incorporates a formal garden designed in the 1920s, as his sole garden commission in Kent, by the acclaimed Arts and Crafts architect Sir (Edward) Guy Dawber. The main features of Dawber’s garden survive although some significant reconfiguration took place in the mid-1980s along with the creation of a new, informal garden in an adjacent compartment. The house and garden have significant historic associations with public, royal and literary figures, including Sir Peter Buck, King James I and Charles Dickens.

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE:
Eastgate House garden is recommended for inclusion on the local list of heritage assets for the following principal reasons:
Age, rarity and survival: The site exhibits important surviving features of an early C20 formal garden, providing a contemporary garden setting for the grade I listed C16 townhouse. Significant surviving architectural features of the main formal garden, designed by Sir (Edward) Guy Dawber, include the garden walls, a garden house, a shelter, some York-stone paving and some terracing. Dawber was an acclaimed Arts and Crafts architect who ranked alongside his contemporaries, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) and Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942), all of whom were awarded the rare distinction of a royal gold medal for architecture. Dawber had only four commissions in Kent, including the Foord Alms-houses, in Priestlands, Rochester, but the Eastgate House commission for the Foord annexe and cottage was the only one specifically to include a designed garden and was therefore unique in Kent.
Aesthetic value: Dawber’s garden design included signature architectural features and L-shaped flower-beds, typifying the Arts and Crafts style that he used elsewhere, particularly at Netherswell Manor in Gloucestershire and Hamptworth Lodge in Wiltshire. Dawber’s formal garden was intended to form an integral part of the surrounding buildings: architectural details found in the buildings were reflected in the garden, providing a coherent whole. Although the garden was radically altered during the 1980s, Dawber’s final designs survive in his fully detailed drawings, and to a significant extent, in surviving structures, and therefore it is perfectly feasible for his garden to be fully restored.

Evidential value: The history of Eastgate House is reasonably well supported by documentary and physical evidence dating from the C16, though there are some important gaps. The development of the garden itself from the mid-C19 onwards is supported by pictorial and documentary evidence but the creation of a new formal garden in the 1920s exhibits high evidential value through physical survival, primary documentary and pictorial evidence.

Historic association: The notable link between Sir Peter Buck, Eastgate House and the internationally important Royal Naval Dockyard during the late C16 and the early C17 has high associative value. In 1606, Buck’s notable position as Clerk of the Ships allowed him to receive at Eastgate House: King James I, his wife Anne of Denmark, his brother-in-law King Christian IV of Denmark and Henry, Prince of Wales. The King of Denmark lodged overnight during their visit to inspect the Royal Dockyard.
During the C19, Eastgate House was immortalised by the celebrated author, Charles Dickens (1812-70), appearing as ‘Westgate’ in Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers and the ‘Nun’s House’ in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In 1961, Dickens’ Swiss-style chalet that he used for writing at his home at Gad’s Hill, Higham, was finally relocated to the garden at Eastgate House. The important links with the benefactor Thomas Hellyar Foord and the architect Sir Guy Dawber also provide high associative value.

Social, communal and economic value: Eastgate House is a highly distinctive Elizabethan building that provides a strong local identity within Rochester. Large areas of the garden which were given over to orchards and market gardens were well known to local residents. From the mid-C19, Eastgate House has been the subject of many illustrations and photographs, often reproduced and used locally as postcards, thus creating its status as a tourist venue. Its use for most of the C19 as a day and boarding school for young women, and later in the century a YMCA and Temperance Restaurant, provided high social and communal value. This value continued from the early C20 to the early C21 in the use of Eastgate House as a museum which brought large numbers of visitors to the site. Since the closure of the museum in 1979, and the Dickens Centre in 2004, visitors continue to enjoy the public gardens on an everyday basis.

Landmark status: the designed garden at Eastgate House is an integral part of the visually significant building which forms a landmark site within the Rochester townscape. Since the early C20, a clearly visible pedestrian pathway has provided an important route to and from the High Street with direct public access to all areas of the garden.

…GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS
There are four main areas of the garden: the first and second occupy the south-eastern third of the site and form both an ornamental setting for the pedestrian path and front gardens for the house and the Community Hub building; the third and fourth form an enclosed garden and lie to the north and north-east." (1)

For a full and detailed description of the garden's history and layout refer to pages 6-10 and 11-14 respectively (1).

<1> Kent Gardens Trust, 2013, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Medway: Eastgate House, Rochester (Unpublished document). SKE31408.