Bleak House, Broadstairs Bleak House, Broadstairs Bleak House (originally known as Fort House) is a prominent house on the cliff overlooking the North Foreland and Viking Bay in Broadstairs, Kent. It was built around 1801 and then substantially extended, doubling in size, in 1901. The house was the site of the North Cliff Battery and was used as a coastal station for observing maritime activity. The house is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England. Bleak House was originally called Fort House and was the residence of a captain of one of the two coastal forts guarding Broadstairs, the town
Bleak House, Broadstairs the house held a special attraction for Dickens, and was the residence he "most desired" in his most favourite of watering places, Broadstairs. 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." For much of the 20th century, Bleak House was in two quite distinct parts, serving as both a private residence and a Dickens memorial museum. In 2012 the