Bodiam Castle

Bodiam Castle is what many people picture when they think of a medieval castle: a square of sandstone walls with round towers at the corners, battlements, a twin-towered gatehouse, all reflected in a wide moat. The historian Charles Coulson called it the popular ideal of a medieval castle, and the military historian Cathcart King called it the most complete surviving example of a quadrangular castle in England. It was built from 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a Sussex knight who had made his fortune as a mercenary in the Hundred Years' War. That year Richard II gave him a licence to fortify his manor against feared French raids on the south coast. Instead of strengthening his old manor house, Dalyngrigge built a completely new castle in a single campaign, and it was probably finished before 1392.

Bodiam has no keep. Its living quarters were built against the inside of the outer walls around a central courtyard, with four round corner towers, square towers in the middle of three sides and the main gatehouse on the fourth. The gatehouse, with machicolations, murder holes and gun loops, is the most strongly defended part. The water around it was carefully designed, and the approach through ponds and across an island made visitors take the long way round, seeing the castle at its most impressive. The moat could have been drained in a day, and the large windows are weak points for a fortress. Both facts made Bodiam the focus of a long debate among castle scholars in the 1990s about how far such buildings were for defence and how far for show. During the Wars of the Roses its Lancastrian owner, Sir Thomas Lewknor, probably surrendered without a fight. After the Civil War the interior buildings, bridges and barbican were dismantled, leaving the empty shell that survives.

The ivy-covered ruin became one of England's earliest tourist sights. Three owners saved it: "Mad Jack" Fuller, who bought it in 1829; George Cubitt; and Lord Curzon, who drained and cleaned the moat after buying it in 1916. Curzon left the castle to the National Trust in 1925. The outer walls, towers and gatehouse stand to their full height and were given new roofs by the National Trust, while the courtyard inside is open to the sky. The castle is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Monument. It appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and in several episodes of Doctor Who.

Getting there

Bodiam is a small village about 16.5 km north of Hastings. By straight-line distance the nearest airport is London Southend (SEN), about 64 km away, but most visitors travel via London. A scenic way to arrive is the Kent and East Sussex Railway, a heritage steam line from Tenterden whose Bodiam station is about half a mile (800 m) from the castle.