Bodiam Castle

Bodiam Castle, near Robertsbridge in East Sussex, was built for Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a former mercenary of the Hundred Years’ War, after Richard II granted him a licence to crenellate on 20 October 1385. The castle forms a quadrangle without a keep: round towers stand at the corners, square towers in the south, east and west walls, and a gatehouse with two towers in the north. A broad moat fed by springs surrounds it. In the 17th century, after the English Civil War, the castle was partly dismantled and the interior buildings were lost, leaving a ruin. Lord Curzon had parts of it restored from 1919 and bequeathed it to the National Trust in 1925.

You enter the castle by a wooden bridge to the gatehouse. Bodiam lies off the B2244, and the village is also the terminus of the Kent and East Sussex Railway, which runs steam trains from Tenterden in season.