Sir Edward Dalyngrigge built Bodiam Castle in Sussex between 1385 and 1388, ostensibly to defend against French raids during the Hundred Years' War. With its perfect quadrangular form, round corner towers, gatehouse, moat, and reflected image in the still water around it, Bodiam became the archetypal image of the English medieval castle — and one of the most photographed buildings in Britain. Whether it was ever seriously defensible or primarily a symbol of status and chivalric aspiration remains debated.

Bodiam's acquisition and restoration by Lord Curzon in 1917 (bequeathed to the National Trust in 1926) coincided with a renewed poetic interest in English medieval heritage during and after the First World War. The castle's perfect reflection in its moat — beautiful, symmetrical, and enclosed — made it a natural image of nostalgia and lost idealism. Rupert Brooke and his circle evoked exactly such Englishness; later poets used the moated castle to explore themes of insularity and pastoral fantasy.