West Malling home of inter-county cricket in Kent, and it is known that in 1705, "West of Kent" played Chatham at Malling. The setting for the cricket match between All Muggleton and Dingley Dell in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers is reputed to be based on an amalgamation of the grounds at West Malling and Maidstone. There is a resemblance to West Malling in the original illustration of the match, a version of which featured on the back of the £10 banknote featuring Dickens, first circulated on 29 April 1992. Dickens, however, was a regular visitor to Dingley Hall in the village of
Charles Dickens single day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews, and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues", (farces in which Mathews played every character), by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as "Nicholas Nickleby", "Dombey and Son", and especially "Bleak House"—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much