Near the end of the Hundred Years War, England was losing badly. We know from the modern map that England lost all of its continental possessions except for the Channel Islands. Calais was part of the British Empire until 1558, and then recaptured by France, the last toehold of the British removed from the map of France. But during the 14th and 15th centuries, it wasn’t clear whether the swing of power might go even farther. France might invade England and begin taking Kent, Essex and Sussex as French provinces.
So the kings of the time fortified the land the cheap way; in our time, the government passes an unfunded mandate; in theirs, an unfunded license. Permission to build a castle, defined as a dwelling with “crenelations.” The builder got to pay for it himself, but then he and his descendants also got to live in it. If there was an invasion, his house would be one of the defensible structures in the region, with crenelations for archers or gunners to hide behind. In the meantime, let’s say there isn’t an invasion. Anyone want to build a really cool house?
Bodiam Castle, in Sussex, is a good example. From the outside, it looks like a serious 13th century castle. It has towers, parapets, and a moat. In its time, the moat completely surrounded the house, with two drawbridges. One of them was indirectly connected to the house; instead it went first to a little “outwork” fortification on an island.
But Bodiam was only involved in one wartime act, when it was captured from the Lancastrians without damaging the building. Bodiam was really mainly a house. Its focus was on the residential layout. It had a Great Hall with a modern kitchen and nearby pantry, buttery and bakery. There were servants’ quarters and rooms for men at arms; nobody had to sleep in the Hall. If an enemy got inside, there was no way to defend any of the buildings.
Bodiam Castle was hard to rob; it was clearly harder to attack than an ordinary house would be, although this standard is quite low. It’s possible that in 1390, it was still plausibly fortified. But it wasn’t anything like Rhuddlan, Caerphilly or Tancarville. Its site was not chosen for strategic reasons; the design was not shaped around the site to make the site do half the defense. The design was human-centered, instead. The family wanted a nice courtyard and a convenient buttery.
There were a few more generations in which these castles were still plausibly called castles, and it’s from this time that we see the greatest refinement in design of kitchen, fireplaces, windows, wells, and other comforts. These castles were also much less likely to be destroyed for military reasons, since they were not very militant. They were more likely to be kept up and not left as ruins, so from the 14th century, we begin to see some castles that are still habitable.