Eastgate House

It was built in the 1590s for Sir Peter Buck, Mayor of Medway and Clerk of the Cheque at Chatham Dockyard. The house then became home to five generations of his family. In 1687, the Parker family inhabited the house and then in the 1750s, the Bartholemew family owned the house until the mid-18th century. In 1761, it was owned by Annabel Darwin. Then in 1791, it was occupied by James Reed. It is unclear who first set up a school on the site (James or his widow). In 1841, it became a Victorian boarding school for girls governed by Rebecca Norton. It became a young men's hostel in 1890 and then a temperance restaurant in 1897. In 1903, Rochester City Council converted the building into a…

The brick exterior is fragile and expensive to repair. The structure has the date 1591 on a beam in one of the upper rooms of the house. Conservators made some discoveries after removing layers of interior paint: the mysterious drawing of a man's face within a 16th-century setting, and a pattern of black lines with similarity to a plaster painting discovered on the second floor.