A brief history of Bodiam Castle
Illustrated with 104 aerial and hand held photographs
By Ian Mulcahy (23 March 2025)
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Bodiam Castle is located in it's eponymous Civil Parish in Rother, East Sussex and was built in the late 1300s, next to the point where the Roman Road between Rochester & Ore (near Hastings) forded the River Rother, by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge who had acquired the manor of Bodiam through his marriage to Elizabeth Wardeux. There is strong evidence within the fabric of the castle that it was predated on the island by a short lived, and considerably smaller, house. His license to build the castle adds weight to this as it states "he may strengthen with a wall of stone and lime, and crenellate and may construct and make into a castle his manor house of Bodyham, near the sea, in the County of Sussex". This implies that a house existed on the site before the castle. It seems that Sir Edward first selected the site for his new manor house and then expanded his ambitions somewhat.
The Wardeux family had held the manor since at least 1330 and it is likely that the newly weds initially resided in a moated manor house roughly half a mile to the north of the castle, the oval moat of which survives. Archaeological excavations undertaken on the remains of the old site in 1970 suggested that it was abandoned around the time at which the Castle was built. Some historians have an alternative view of the location of the previous manor and suggest that it was, instead, midway between the castle and the moated site at Court Lodge where extensive earthworks survive. Historic England's interpretation of these earthworks is that they were a medieval pleasaunce, or ornamental garden and viewing platform that was laid out in a period contemporary with the building of the castle.
Dalyngrigge, whose family hailed from the Dalling Ridge area of Ashdown Forest, used the threat of French raids into the area to acquire a royal license to enable the construction of the castle on a sandstone spur a stones throw north of the River Rother. Work on the castle began in 1385 and was completed by 1390 using sandstone quarried some ten miles to the north west in Wadhurst. The moat, island and castle are all hosted by an artificial platform which has been dug into the foot of the spur on the northern and western sides with the spoil being used to build up the eastern and southern banks of the moat to the necessary height. It is probable that the moat and island predate the castle by five or so years.
The castle stands on the edges of a man made island surrounded by a large 2 metre deep spring fed moat and is accessed through the main gatehouse via a bridge from the northern bank of the moat. The octagonal plinth at the northern end of the causeway, which originally contained an extra defensive structure, was where the original bridge from the western bank landed before making a 90 degree turn south and onto a stone built causeway which contains the remains of the Barbican. It is said that the original access was via a dog leg bridge so that any potential invader crossing the bridge would have been moving parallel to the northern walls of the castle, so making them an easy prey for the archers. The remains of this bridge were discovered in 1919, but access has been from the north bank since the early 18th century, the new causeway first being depicted in a sketch by Samuel & Nathaniel Buck in 1737. The iron clad oak portcullis in the gatehouse is contemporary with the castle. There is a secondary entrance through the Postern gate on the southern wall of the tower, though the bridge no longer exists.
The castle is built around a hollow courtyard with no keep and all accommodation and services are built into the curtain walls, four round corner towers, three centre towers and the gatehouse which, in some way, demonstrates that perhaps the purpose of castle wasn't so much about defence after all as the bedrooms were in the corner towers. The external structure is almost complete, with a minimal amount of restoration work carried out in 1919 by Lord Curzon, but most of the interior buildings around the central courtyard are now in ruins, having been partially dismantled during the civil war in the 1640s by which time the castle was no longer being used as a residence. Enough of the internal structure survives to enable us to determine the internal layout. A large window near the eastern end of the southern curtain wall shows the position of the great hall. In the eastern range we find the principal living-rooms and the chapel, indicated by the large window in the curtain wall in a to the north of the central tower. The northern range was home to stables, a storeroom and another hall, spread over two storeys. To the west was further accommodation, the kitchen and the pantry. The kitchen area is the best preserved of the internal structure.
The castle stayed in the Dalyngrigge family until the death of the childless Richard Dalyngrigge in 1470 when it passed to his nephew, Sir Roger Lewknor, but Sir Roger saw his castle confiscated by the crown in 1483 after he was accused of treason for his part in the War of the Roses. On Henry VIIs accession in 1485 it was returned to it's rightful owner. Sir Roger died in 1543 and the castle and manor were split between various descendants, but the castle was sold in 1588 to John Levett. Most of the manor was bought by Sir Nicholas Tufton, the Earl of Thanet, in 1623 and in 1639 his son and beneficiary John Tufton, the Second Earl of Thanet bought Bodiam Castle, so reuniting it with the manor. Tufton was a Royalist and during the Civil War he led attacks on Lewes and Haywards Heath, where he was soundly defeated. He was fined £9,000 (approx. £2m today) by Parliament and had to sell the Castle to Nathaniel Powell, a Parliamentarian, for £6,000 (approx. £1.3m today) in 1645 in order to pay his debt. It is widely thought that it was at around this time that the internal structures were dismantled to put the castle out of use, but there is no hard evidence to support this and the fact the curtain walls and defensive structures have remained largely intact is a strong argument against this belief. Whilst owning Bodiam, Powell built Ewhurst Place in Ewhurst Green on the ridge overlooking the castle meaning that another possibility is that the castle was quarried for building material, with the exterior of the castle being left alone to preserve his view. If this were the case, none of the castle stone remains at Ewhurst Places and what survives of the old house is brick built. Some historians have suggested that the dismantling commenced a century earlier, though this seems to be based solely on John Leland, the famed antiquarian, describing it as 'an old castle' in 1540.
The castle remained in the hands of the Powell family until 1722 when Sir Thomas Webster bought it. The Webster family held the castle for over a century and turned it into something of an early tourist attraction. It was sold to John Fuller, previously MP for Southampton and Sussex as well as a plantation owner in Jamaica, in 1829 for £3,000 (£330,000 today - contrast this with the price in 1644!). It is said that Fuller bought the castle to prevent the Websters from dismantling it for building material and he repaired one of the towers and removed a cottage that had been built in the courtyard during the 1700s. George Cubitt, Baron Ashcombe, from Denbies in Dorking bought the castle from Fullers grandson in 1849 for £5,000 (£660,000 today) and continued with Fullers renovations.
Following Cubitt's death in 1917 the castle was bought by Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston who, with the aid of William Weir; an architect who specialised in the repair of historic buildings and was a prominent member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, re-did much of Cubitt's work which he deemed to be unsatisfactory. As part of his work, Curzon drained the moat and recovered iron cannon-balls, of the civil war era, and damaged stonework consistent with being struck by such cannon balls which adds further fuel to the 'when and why was the castle ruined' argument discussed a couple of paragraphs previously.
Lord Curzon donated the site to the National Trust in 1925 and the trust retained the services of Weir to continue the job he had started. As well as benefitting from sympathetic restoration, the castle was also made safe and accessible for visitors whilst preserving the medieval fabric. At the end of the Second World War, and following Weirs retirement, a renowned and long established firm of architects, Carden and Godfrey, were appointed and a programme of masonry repair and consolidation was undertaken. In 1960 another firm, Benson & Benson, were appointed and, alongside normal day to day maintenance and repairs, they set about improving visitor access and facilities throughout the 60s and 70s, including converting and extending Castle Cottage into what is now the tea room to the north of the bridge. The current timber bridge providing access to the castle was constructed in 1977 following the removal of the early 18th century causeway and at the same time work to facilitate public access to the gatehouse tower was undertaken.
Bodiam remains a hugely popular tourist destination, providing visitors with an archetypal, and mostly original, fairy tale English medieval castle experience.
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Text & photographs © Ian Mulcahy. Contact photos@iansapps.co.uk or visit my 'Use of my photographs' page for licensing queries (ground level photographs only). |
