GAD'S-HILL, an eminence 1 mile NW of Strood, in Kent. An obelisk is on it, to the memory of a local celebrity of the name of Larkins; an inn is on it, called the Sir John Falstaff Inn; and a red brick house is on it, inhabited by the novelist, Charles Dickens, Esq. The hill got its name from being a resort of "gads, " or high-way robbers; it formerly had thick woods, which gave them shelter; it possessed such bad reputation in the time of Elizabeth as to be appropriately selected by Shakespeare for the scene of the robbery of Falstaff; and it continued to have that reputation till the time of John Clavell, who speaks of

Gad's Hill, and those
Red tops of mountains where good people lose
Their ill-kept purses.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))