Charles Dickens Well Pump - Eastgate House, Rochester, Kent, UK - Relocated Structures on Waymarking.com

The plaque, adjacent to the pump, reads:

Well Pump

This horse-powered pump was
installed by Charles Dickens at
Gads Hill Place, Higham, in 1857.
It was brought to its present site
for preservation in 1973.

The Project Gutenberg website [visit link] contains a copy of a letter from Charles Dickens that makes mention of the pump:

"Mr. Henry Austin

Gad's Hill, Saturday, June 6th, 1857.

My dear Henry,

Here is a very serious business on the great estate respecting the water supply. Last night, they had pumped the well dry merely in raising the family supply for the day; and this morning (very little water having been got into the cisterns) it is dry again! It is pretty clear to me that we must look the thing in the face, and at once bore deeper, dig, or do some beastly thing or other, to secure this necessary in abundance. Meanwhile I am in a most plaintive and forlorn condition without your presence and counsel. I raise my voice in the wilderness and implore the same!!!

Wild legends are in circulation among the servants how that Captain Goldsmith on the knoll above—the skipper in that crow's-nest of a house—has millions of gallons of water always flowing for him. Can he have damaged my well? Can we imitate him, and have our millions of gallons? Goldsmith or I must fall, so I conceive.

If you get this, send me a telegraph message informing me when I may expect comfort. I am held by four of the family while I write this, in case I should do myself a mischief—it certainly won't be taking to drinking water.

Ever affectionately (most despairingly)."

The Fellowship Kent website [visit link] adds:

"Soon after he took possession, the well ran dry, and he was faced with the expense of sinking a much deeper one, from which water was drawn by means of a horse driven pump. The drains also needed sorting out, and new cesspools were installed. Dickens had a number of "improvements" made to the house, at least one of which weakened the structure. And he managed to obtain planning permission to build a tunnel under the road, to the shrubbery where he later installed his famous Swiss chalet. Dickens worked on several of his books, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, at Gads Hill Place. He also entertained famous literary figures such as Hans Christian Anderson. And it was there he died on the evening of June 9, 1870."