240 MedicBval Military Architecture, Who was Bodi, or Bode, whose home was here established, is unknown. He was evidently a Saxon, and from the position of his estate, probably an early one, giving name it may be to a tract won in arms from the Britons. Ham is here a very common termination to the proper names of places, varied with Hurst and Den and Ley, and other less frequent but equally Saxon denominations. The church stands on the high ground, a little north of the centre of the cape, the castle about 600 yards to the south of it, and about half the distance from the Rother, at some thirty feet or so above its level. The Rother, here and lower down, traverses broad patches of lowland, now fertile meadow, but in former days evidently inac- cessible morass. The position, therefore, between the two streams with their marshy banks was defended by nature towards the south and east, the quarter from which, after the complete expulsion of the Britons and during the early Saxon period, danger was mainly to be apprehended. The earlier lords, both Saxon and Norman, who gave name to, and derived their names from, Bodiham, pitched their homestead on the north side of the high ground, some way from the church, and upon the right bank of the Kent Ditch, where the site is still indicated by some earthworks and a moat. Nearer to, but south of the church, on the brow of the hill, above the present .castle, are the remains of another earthwork, rectangular and oblong in form, the site probably either of an early residence or a still earlier encampment. Below this brow, on the southern verge of and just within the slope, it pleased a Lord of Bodiham, having become so by marriage with its heiress, to establish a new residence. Sir Edward Dalingruge, a successful soldier in the rough school of the Black Prince and his captains, of whom his immediate chief. Sir William Knollys, was one of the roughest, having held offices of trust under Richard IL, decided here to build a castle suitable to his rank, wealth, and mili- tary fame; and having, in the 9th of Richard, 1385-6, obtained the royal licence, he constructed at a vast cost, both in earthwork and masonry, the castle here described. Bodiham is a building of very high interest. It is a complete and typical castle of the end of the fourteenth century, laid out entirely upon a new site, and constructed after one design, and at one period. It but seldom happens that a great fortress is wholly original, of one, and that a known, date, and so completely free from alterations or additions. It has, moreover, fallen into good hands. Enough, and not too much, has been done to arrest the effects of time and weather. The repairs have been well executed, and in Wadhurst stone, the proper material ; and, though well watched, it is open to all who care to visit it. In plan and details Bodiham belongs to the early Perpendicular style, and occupies a mean position between Caerphilly, a work late in the thirteenth century, and Wressil, only a few years later than
