Charles Dickens lived at 48 Doughty Street. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
In the spring of 1837, a young writer with a growing reputation and a growing family needed more room. After the birth of their first son in January 1837, those rooms were no longer enough, so Dickens went looking for something larger and more fitting for a rising author. He found it at 48 Doughty Street in Bloomsbury, a four-storey Georgian townhouse and took it on a three-year lease. Nearly 190 years later, it is the only London home of Dickens that still stands, according to the Heritage Fund. At the time of the reopening, Dickens had rented the Georgian townhouse constructed in 1808 for £80 per year, according to the Associated Press. This was his home from 1837 to 1839. English Heritage notes that Dickens moved to number 48 in March 1837 and paid £80 a year in rent. The Heritage Fund’s press release on the reopening calls 48 Doughty Street Dickens’s home at the start of his career and the birthplace of classics such as Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. The property was slated for demolition in 1923 but saved by the Dickens Fellowship, which was formed 21 years prior, according to an article on the blog called Memoirs of a Metro Girl. Nearly 190 years after Dickens first moved in, 48 Doughty Street remains a rare physical link to the early years of one of Britain’s best-known novelists. The house’s restoration did more than repair a Grade-1 listed building.
Charles Dickens had married Catherine Hogarth the previous year and the couple had been living in rented rooms at Furnival’s Inn in Holborn. The Heritage Fund describes it as a grade one listed Georgian townhouse. It reopened space connected to Dickens daily life, expanded the museum facilities and made the story of his rise from a young, newly married writer to a celebrated author more accessible to visitors.
