A regal renewal

Restoration House, Rochester, Kent The home of Robert Tucker and Jonathan Wilmot A house that received Charles II and inspired Charles Dickens has undergone a magnificent renewal over the past three decades, as John Goodall explains

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EARLY on May 29, 1660, 'betwixt four and five in the morning, the militia forces of Kent lining the ways, and maidens strewing herbs and flowers, and the several towns hanging out white sheets', Charles II set out in triumph from Rochester to London on the final leg of his journey from Continental exile to Restoration. It was his 30th birthday. According to the published account in the newspaper Mercurius Publicus, he had dined and lodged the previous night with his two brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, in the house of a senior officer in the New Model Army, Col Robert Gibbon. The building, known after this event since at least the early 19th century as Restoration House, has—together with its historic garden—been the object of a remarkable and sustained revival over the past three decades.

In stylistic terms, the imposing brick frontage of Restoration House seems almost precisely to match the moment of its mid-17th-century celebrity. It's entered through a small garden court that is enclosed from the front by a wall and framed to the sides by projecting wings. The central porch is rich with Classical ornament—including pilasters and rustication—laid within the brickwork. In the inside angles of the wings, there are additional projections with similar detailing (Fig 3). Crowning the building with its high roofs are several ornamental gables. This formal treatment, however, struggles to obscure irregularities and asymmetries that are evidence of a much deeper history that stretches back to the late Middle Ages.