The Oak Gates Provided by Jack Fuller, Entrance to the Gatehouse
The South Range: Postern Tower at Centre
To the left was the Great Hall,
to the right the Kitchen
Bodiam Castle, East Sussex
Bodiam Castle was built by Sir Edward
Dalyngrigge in the last decades of the 14th
Century. It was partly demolished after the Civil War in the mid-17th Century. Sir
Thomas Webster purchased the ruin on 23 July 1723. ( He also bought Battle Abbey and Robertsbridge Priory about the same time)
Bodiam Castle, National Trust Guidebook, David Thackray, 1991, pp. 26& 27
" The third Sir Godfrey Webster attempted to sell the property in 1815 and finally achieved the sale of the castle and 24 acres of adjoining land in 1829 to John Fuller of Rosehill in the parish of Brightling, Sussex, for £3,000. (Fuller's copy of the auction particulars was recently given to the Trust by a descendant.) Fuller is thought to have bought the castle to save it from being dismantled by the Websters and the stone used for building. He is recorded as having provided new folding oak gates in the front doorway of the Gatehouse, and also as having restored the Postern Tower, presumably by removing the cottage which was there 50 years earlier. These were the first positive moves to protect the ruins, an intention that was pursued more vigorously by George Cubitt, who purchased the castle and 24 acres from John Fuller's grandson for something over £5,000 in 1864."
Postern Tower at Centre of South Wall
It is well known that Jack Fuller never married and died without issue. Bodiam Castle was left to General Sir Augustus Eliott Fuller MP, the son of Jack Fuller's cousin John Trayton Fuller. It was Augustus Eliott Fuller's son Owen John Augustus Fuller-Meyrick who sold Bodiam Castle to George Cubitt (1828-1917), the first Lord Ashcombe in 1864.
Lord George Nathaniel Curzon purchased the Castle from Ashcombe's son Henry Cubitt,the second Lord Ashcombe, (1867-1947) in 1916 and undertook the research and restoration of Bodiam Castle that visitors enjoy today. The Castle was bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Curzon who died in 1925.
