Our Blog - August 2025 - England trip - Bodiam Castle

Bodiam Castle is a 14th-century moated castle, built in 1385 to defend the area against French invasion during the Hundred Years' War. The same family, the Dalyngrigges, owned the castle for several generations until it passed by marriage to the Lewknor family. During the Wars of the Roses, Sir Thomas Lewknor supported the House of Lancaster, and when Richard III of the House of York became king in 1483, he sent his supporters to besiege the castle. It was confiscated but then returned to the Lewknors when Henry VII of the House of Tudor became king in 1485. Descendants of the Lewknors owned the castle until at least the 16th century.

After the English Civil War (1642-1651), many castles were dismantled or damaged to keep them from being reused. Here, they dismantled the bridges, gate house, and buildings inside the castle, keeping the main exterior structure intact.

A bit of trivia for Monty Python fans ... Bodiam Castle was used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) in an establishing shot identifying it as "Swamp Castle" in the "Tale of Sir Lancelot" sequence.

A quadrangular castle, Bodiam is roughly square-shaped. This type of castle, with a central courtyard and buildings against the curtain wall, was characteristic of castle architecture in the 14th century. From the parking lot, we ended up walking around several sides to get to the entrance.

It is always hard to get a good picture of Lucy in front of castles, especially when we brought lots of sunshine to England with us.

Here you can see the front of the castle with the moat and a rebuilt bridge. The last remnant of the gatehouse is there in the middle of the walkway. Above the gate are 3 coats of arms carved in relief into the arch, which are from the Wardeux, Dalyngrigge, and Radynden families. The Dalyngrigge family built the castle, the Wardeux crest comes from his wife, and the Radynden crest is from his mother's family who were the original manor house owners.

As I mentioned before, most of the interior buildings were destroyed, so we only have foundation outlines of several of the buildings, like the great hall, the kitchen, the chapel, and the various household apartments. But you can get an idea from some of the walls with windows and door frame still visible.

Here is the South-East Tower, which would have had rooms on several stories (you can see the door on the upper floor).

Many of the castles had some kind of "special" thing for kids who would be visiting during their summer school holidays. Here, it was dragons. Kids had a special booklet to go around and find various dragons and if they found them all, they get a special gift. This was based around the book series How to Train Your Dragon (by Cressida Cowell) that was then made into several films. The author was actually there in one of the rooms, which was interesting.