Release a crow from the tower of St. Mary’s church in Rye and after flying about 13 miles north-west it can take a break among the crenellations of Bodiam Castle. This splendid 14th century castle, albeit somewhat ruined, is probably what most people would think was a medieval castle, with its towers, portcullis and wide moat. As a child, my toy castle was very much like it.
Work on turning the manor of Bodiam into a defensive castle began in 1385. At least, that was what the licence to crenellate was intended to allow. Its owner, Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, was a younger son of a landed family from Dalling Ridge near East Grinstead. This meant that he had to make his own way in the world, his father’s estate being entailed on the eldest son of the family. He clearly did well, for by 1378, through marriage into a landed family, he owned the old Manor of Bodiam. His wife, Elizabeth Wardelieu’s, family had owned Bodiam since the beginning of the 14th century. Between 1379 – 1388 he was a knight of the shire, one of the leading citizens of the county, and sitting in 10 sessions of parliament. A further crown appointment came in 1380, when he was one of the commissioners that looked at the country and its possessions, and the income and expenditure of the royal household. He was also appointed as surveyor of Winchelsea, to decide how it should be defended against attack by the French. Between 1384 – 1835 he was on the commission to fortify Rye.
During this period, England and France were engaged in the 116 years long so-called Hundred Years War. Bodiam, being fairly close to the coast, was really in the front line should the French invade England. As with so many others, Dalyngrigge had made his fortune out of the war. He joined the free companies, mercenaries who fought for payment. He went to France in 1367 with the Duke of Clarence, son of King Edward III. For a while he was fighting alongside the Earl of Arundel, before joining the company of Sir Robert Knolles, who was supposed to have made 100,000 gold crowns as a mercenary. It was from this fighting that Dalyngrigge made the money to update Bodiam, after returning to England in 1377. After helping to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, in 1383 he was given a charter to hold a weekly market and annual fair at Bodiam.
Dalyngrigge was involved in a court case with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and uncle of the king. Lancaster was suing Dalyngrigge for interfering with his newly bought Sussex estates. Local landowners were displeased at the duke’s behaviour. Appearing in court and defending himself, we can learn much of Dalyngrigge’s nature. He became violent and behaved badly. Twice he flung his own gauntlet to the floor and stated that his own local standing was compromised by the duke’s newly acquired local authority. To him it was a matter of honour, not strictly legality. The case was decided in the duke’s favour and Dalyngrigge fined nearly £1,000 for contempt of court. He was to be held in jail until payment was made. Fortunately for him, his old friend Lord Arundel used his influence with the king. The Duke of Lancaster set out for Brest and Corunna on July 9, 1386. Then Dalyngrigge was let off payment of the fine and retook his seat in parliament.
The south of England was panicked by rumours of an impending French invasion in 1385. A fleet of 1,200 English ships had crossed the English Channel and moored in the Flanders port of Sluys, ready to counterattack. Against this background of fear, Dalyngrigge was granted a licence to crenellate his existing house – in effect to turn it into a castle. King Richard II gave the licence, which stated: “Know that of our special grace we have granted and given licence on behalf of ourselves and our heirs, so far as in us lies, to our beloved and faithful Edward Dalyngrigge Knight, that he may strengthen with a wall of stone and lime, and crenellate and may construct and make into a castle his manor house of Bodiam, near the sea, in the county of Sussex, for the defence of the adjacent country, and the resistance to our enemies … In witness of which etc. the king at Westminster 20 October.” A further licence allowed him to divert a small stream from Salehurst to Bodiam for powering a watermill.
Note the wording – “make into a castle his house at Bodiam.” He didn’t do that, he raised an entirely new structure, on a new site, and quite quickly. It is believed to have been complete by 1392, which in those days was fast for building a large, stone structure in an artificial lake. For the first year of building Dalyngrigge was away, serving the king as captain of the port of Brest. He returned home, but was able to enjoy his new castle for a very short period, for some time between July 1393 and August 1394 he died.
Edward’s son, John, inherited his father’s estate. Like his father he was in favour with the king, who described him as the ‘King’s Knight.’ Such was his status that the king paid him an annual allowance of 100 marks. This was never a coin, but a convenient accounting figure and had a value then of 13 shillings and four pence. Quite a good annual income, without whatever else he was able to accrue. He died on September 27, 1408, willing all his property to Alice, his wife. She died childless in 1442, when the estate passed to her husband’s cousin, Richard. On his death, with no direct heir, in 1470, the estate passed to another cousin, Sir Roger Lewknor.
Sir Roger’s son, Thomas, had supported the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses. When Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a member of the opposing House of York became King Richard III in 1483, Roger was accused of treason and raising an army against the king. As a result, his own uncle and the Earl of Surrey were empowered to lay siege to Bodiam Castle. There is no evidence that a siege was laid against Bodiam. However, in the moat, some years ago, a bombard was discovered. Dating from exactly the period of the authorised siege, it is the oldest bombard in the country. Bodiam does have a number of inverted loops in its walls; these were openings made specifically to allow handguns to be fired from them. A bombard with a bore of 12 inches would be a fearsome siege weapon. Perhaps it was the threat of the opposition firepower that caused Lewknor to surrender the castle to the king? It was then confiscated, and Nicholas Rigby was installed as Constable. When Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the victor, Henry Tudor, became King Henry VII and returned the castle, but not the surrounding land, to Lewknor. The lands were not returned in full until the reign of King Henry VIII in 1542.
John Levett bought just the castle in 1588, the estate having been divided by various legacies through the Lewknor family. Sir Nicholas Turton, later created Earl of Thanet, bought most of the estate in 1623, passing it to his son, John, on his own death in 1632. John added the castle to the estate when he bought it in 1639. He didn’t hold it for long however, for in the civil war he loyally supported the king. John was leader of an attack on Lewes and defeated by the parliamentarian forces at the Battle of Muster Green, near Haywards Heath in 1642. The result was that in 1643 and 1644, most of his lands were confiscated by parliament, and he was fined £9,000. He was forced to sell Bodiam castle in 1644, for £6,000. The buyer was a supporter of parliament, Nathaniel Powell.
Powell was created a baronet when King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660. It was during his ownership that Bodiam was slighted, that is, its defences were dismantled sufficiently to prevent its meaningful use in battle. Actually, very little damage was caused to Bodiam. The domestic buildings inside the curtain walls were destroyed, as were the bridges across the moat, and the barbican, the main gatehouse that originally stood on an island to the north of the castle, and was a heavily defended entrance. Powell died in either 1674 or 1675, when his son, also Nathaniel, inherited it. On his death, the castle was inherited by his daughter in law, Elizabeth Clitherow.
The castle was bought Sir Thomas Webster in 1722, and it was held by his descendants for more than 100 years. Contemporary pictures show it as an ivy decked romantic ruin, and it became popular destination because of the revival of interest in Gothic architecture. Sir Godfrey Webster in 1815 had decided to sell Bodiam, which he finally did in 1829, along with 24 acres of land. The buyer was Mad Jack Fuller, squire of Brightling, member of parliament and well-known builder of follies. It is generally believed that the reason he bought it was to save it from demolition and the reuse of its stone. The castle with 24 acres was again sold, in 1849, when George Cubitt, first Lord Ashcombe, paid Fuller’s grandson £5,000. Following Fuller’s lead, he worked on renovation the castle and commissioned its first full survey in 1864. He was responsible for restoring the almost collapsed southwest tower. By then the castle was covered in ivy, which was left for its decorative looks, and trees growing unchecked in the courtyard were left in place. The fashion then was for such places to be picturesque.
Into the story now comes George, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, politician and former Viceroy of India and foreign secretary. A man who was beyond grand. When at Oxford a little poem was written about him. “My name is George Nathaniel Curzon, I am a most superior person, blue are my eyes, pink is my cheek, I dine at Blenheim once a week.” His knowledge of the real world was minimal. Once, seeing a napkin ring in a jeweller’s Bond Street window, he asked a friend what it was. When it was explained to him that not everyone could have a freshly laundered napkin at every meal, he was shocked: “What?” he said, “Can such poverty really exist?”
When foreign secretary he complained to a clerk who had telephoned him at his Derbyshire estate, Kedleston, about something very trivial. He said: “Do you realise that you have caused me to walk from one end to the other of a building the size of Buckingham Palace, just to tell me this?”
He saw Bodiam and wanted it because, “so rare a treasure should neither be lost to our country nor desecrated by irreverent hands.” Lord Ashcombe refused to sell it, but after his death early in 1917, Curzon was able to buy it from Ashcombe’s son. A programme of renovation and investigation began in 1919. The moat was drained and cleared of more than three feet of sludge. At this time the bases of the original bridges were uncovered. It was also found that the moat was no more than five feet deep in most places, and seven feet deep at the southeast corner, so its use for defence would have been more as an inconvenience than a serious form of defence. That essential for castle living, a well, was found in the northwest tower. The area around the castle was cleared to allow a clear view and a cottage, part museum and part caretaker’s cottage, was built.
In 1925, the year Curzon dies, Bodiam was donated to the National Trust, which continued with the restoration work. In 1970 more excavation work was carried out and the moat redrained. The castle became a popular setting for films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail. On television it had a starring role in The Goodies and Doctor Who. It is now a major attraction, with more than 175,000 people visiting each year.
Image Credits: WyrdLight.com/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodiam-castle-10My8-1197.jpg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en, Michael Garlick https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodiam_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4307505.jpg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, Len Williams https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodiam_Castle,_Interior_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4177853.jpg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en.