Qualla: Bodiam Castle

Bodiam Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chuck Andolino from Upstate NY, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bodiam Castle has twenty-eight toilets, and they all drained directly into the moat. The archaeologist Matthew Johnson called it an open sewer. The moat is what tourists notice first, the reflective rectangle around the perfectly proportioned stone fortress that everyone, including Monty Python's location scouts, takes for the popular ideal of a medieval castle. Edward Dalyngrigge built it in the 1380s with a licence from Richard II to refortify his manor house. He built a new castle instead, on a fresh site, in a single phase of construction. The French raids on the south coast gave him the excuse. The wealth he had won fighting in France gave him the means. Whether Bodiam was ever serious about defending England, or whether it was always meant to look serious while functioning as a country house, has been argued by castle historians for over a century.

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: Chuck Andolino from Upstate NY, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bodiam Castle: Dalyngrigge's Hurry

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Berit from Redhill/Surrey, UK, CC BY 2.0. Edward Dalyngrigge served as Captain of the port of Brest in 1386-87, far from his Kentish lands. The castle went up quickly during those years - archaeologist David Thackray has deduced from the architectural uniformity that construction was completed in a single phase, probably...

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: Berit from Redhill/Surrey, UK | CC BY 2.0

Bodiam Castle: The Octagon and the Bridges

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julian P Guffogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. Getting into Bodiam was meant to be theatre. The original approach involved two bridges from the western bank, one of them a drawbridge. The route crossed an artificial island in the moat called the Octagon, which had its own garderobe and was probably defended by a small guard. ...

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: Julian P Guffogg | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bodiam Castle: Wars of the Roses and a Siege That May Never Have Happened

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CompellingPhotography, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bodiam passed to the Lewknor family in 1470. Sir Thomas Lewknor was a Lancastrian, and when Richard III took the throne in 1483 he was accused of treason. The Earl of Surrey received permission to levy men and besiege Bodiam Castle. Whether the siege actually went ahead is unreco...

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: CompellingPhotography | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bodiam Castle: Mad Jack and Lord Curzon

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony McCallum, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1815 Bodiam was a ruin overgrown with ivy and trees, a picturesque Gothic Revival fantasy that had become a kind of early tourist attraction. John Mad Jack Fuller bought it in 1829 for £3,000 - Fuller was a Sussex squire and parliamentary character famous for his eccentric mon...

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: Antony McCallum | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bodiam Castle: Swamp Castle

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Mallinson Lewis from Oxford, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1975, Bodiam appeared briefly in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as the establishing shot for Swamp Castle in the Tale of Sir Lancelot - the castle that kept sinking into the swamp until the king built a fourth one that stayed up. The Goodies had used it in 1973. Doctor Who ca...

Read more: Bodiam Castle on Qualla

Image: Oliver Mallinson Lewis from Oxford, United Kingdom | CC BY-SA 2.0