... gatehouse is situated on the North wall. Surrounding the castle walls is a spring fed moat as the gatehouse at one point in time carried the drawbridge across. The adjacent moat was created from an artificial lake. While the construction and architecture of the castle walls, towers, and moat are symbolic in the ideology of medieval castles, these structures were indispensable to the castle's defense and security. Military tactics and units such as sapping, battering rams, and catapults played an important role in the design and fabrication of Bodiam Castle. Sapping, or undermining, was a siege method used against a walled city, fortress, or castle2. In warfare during the Middle Ages, a tunnel would be dug to bring down castles and other fortifications. The technique was used when the fortification was not built on solid rock, and was developed as a response to stone built castles that could not be ...

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