Bodiam Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Bodiam Castle stands in the Rother Valley, on the eastern edge of Sussex, in the middle of a broad sheet of water that surrounds it entirely. Built at the end of the fourteenth century by the knight Edward Dalyngrigge, a veteran of the Hundred Years' War, it is one of the most accomplished examples of a late medieval quadrangular castle in England. Its sandstone curtain wall forms an almost regular quadrilateral flanked by four round corner towers and square towers in the middle of the sides, the north front housing the gatehouse, which still has a portcullis. The inner courtyard, which brought together the great hall, kitchens, lodgings and chapel, lost most of its buildings after they were dismantled in the seventeenth century, which today offers the striking contrast of an almost intact outer shell and a ruined interior. Having become a picturesque ruin popular with painters, the castle was consolidated by John Fuller and then extensively restored by Lord Curzon, who bequeathed it to the National Trust in 1925. Open to the public since 1926, it is listed Grade I and protected as a scheduled monument together with its designed landscape, its mill pond and its medieval agricultural remains.