In the early 1950s, my mother took me to see Bodiam Castle in East Sussex. It is every child’s idea of a castle: eight massive towers, a very broad moat, a drawbridge and a portcullis. However, inside — as I remember to my considerable disappointment — there is virtually nothing to see. The castle is like an extravagant folly (and in truth probably about as useful). Esther Meynell says that if you forget ‘its perpendicular date, it seems to typify all the castles of romance. Morgan le Fay must have dwelt there, or the Lady of Shalott must have taken her fatal glance upon the outer world from its battlements that stand reflected in the moat below. It is a place that makes all the fairy–stories come true.’ (From S P B Mais, The Land of the Cinque Ports. Christopher Johnson, 1949)
Standing on the edge of the moat, I remember seeing a train (on the levels of the Rother valley) on its way from Robertsbridge to Tenterden (and perhaps on to Headcorn too). It impressed even my infant mind as something very old–fashioned — especially as the carriages were so short — if not in fact Victorian. What I must actually have seen, I am sure, is something like the train in the superb photo below. The preserved Kent and East Sussex Railway now runs from Bodiam to Tenterden, and the train here featured is climbing the very steep approach to Tenterden.
Many of the branch lines proposed in the late nineteenth century were never built. One of these was to have run from Tenterden to Appledore; another from Tenterden to Rye; and a third from Tenterden to Cranbrooke. How swiftly they would have fallen to Beeching’s axe!
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