Hammond Castle Construction

The castle construction was started in the mid-1920s and finished in 3 years to the tune of a half million dollars (around $4.5M today). I don't know if that includes the cost of obtaining and shipping all of the antiquities used by Hammond in the castle's construction. Incorporated into the castle's design were parts of Medieval buildings and antiquities from around the world; I saw everything from Byzantine-looking plaques and carvings to the entire shop fronts of original buildings. The whole thing has a rather slap-dash eclectic look to it, especially the main castle. I don't mean slap-dash as in poorly built, but sometimes as I viewed the structure I wondered about the lack of continuity, even in the space of the same wall! I suppose I can't fault the designers, when I design my castles in Sketchup, I'm always trying to mash more than one style into the works to make it more interesting. As far as the major styles of the castle, it was built with a "German" section, and a "French" section. Basically the older looking section with the great-hall, turrets and the like is the former, and attached to that is a chateau/castle building in the latter style.

The French themed building was very well done, quite neat and pretty on the exterior. You can't quite get a good view of it in the photos due to the trees and the inability to get far enough away to get it all in one shot. You can see similar buildings here to kind of get a feel for the look.

The interesting thing is that the Chateau is "hollow"; it's basically a square with rooms on the sea and street sides, hallways at the farthest end and attached to the castle great room at the other end. The interior of the hollow square is covered with a glass roof and has a pool and a very nice little courtyard. Facing the courtyard are two real Medieval shop fronts, what looks to be a Gothic church entrance and a Romanesque wall. This end of the castle has all of the bedrooms (at least the ones that were accessible to the public), the dining area, the kitchen and many of the normal-looking living areas of the castle. The kitchen is a mix of modern and old, obviously added to and re-done as time went by. In this end of the house there were sitting areas, a library, and offices (Hammond ran his business out of the castle for a while). The dining room was possibly authentic Medieval as well; if it wasn't, they did a great job making it look so. Also, one of the rooms apparently has tiles brought from Diego Columbus' (son of Christoper) home.

The main castle had lots of little passages, rooms and spiral staircases. It contains a chapel as well as what looked to be a small real Medieval armorer's shop and tools, and the castle armory. I think there were several rooms that were unavailable to the public in the castle, from the outside one could see rooms stuffed with objects that we didn't get to see, as well as many, many locked doors. The overall layout of the castle seemed pointless, there were small rooms scattered about that didn't seem to serve any purpose other than to hold the items collected by Hammond. They were too small to be functional and too difficult to get to for daily use. I get the feeling that the castle was more of a curiosity and novelty for Hammond's guests, but all real living was done in the Chateau.

Unfortunately, the dungeon was inaccessible to the public while we were there. I'm not sure when or if it is available for viewing. There is a photo of a rather realistic deceased dummy on the other side of a grated door in a dark passage in one of the photos, I assume this is one of the dungeon's access points.

One of the disappointing things about the castle was the fact that throughout the castle, new, "tacky" items have been added. There were modern resin gargoyles glued to the walls, cheap production swords from catalogs (I've looked at them in those very same catalogs), Thomas Kinkade prints on the walls. If I were younger, I'd be pretty excited at all the shiny, sharp pointy things hung on the walls. Now it just doesn't seem right.

My observations on the construction...

The buildings were constructed of poured concrete in many places, or concrete and stone where it had stone incorporated into the design. It's pretty random as far as what went where. The photos show some of the odd arrangement of materials. I think insulation was unheard of or unplanned for due to authenticity or it simply wasn't done with those materials back then. Our house was built just prior to 1900 and I don't think they had any insulation at all in the walls until someone cut holes in the exterior and blew some in. The castle's buildings have solid walls, meaning probably quite warm and humid in the summer and cold and clammy in the winter (just like the real thing, eh?). As a side note, the museum curator showed us on the B&W photo of the castle where the high tide line was today vs. where it was when the photo was taken. There was a 20-30 foot difference. Sinking earth or rising sea levels? You pick... Anyway, the castle was definitely lacking in windows and ventilation, much of the castle proper was stuffy, humid and dark; almost claustrophobic. The heat generated by the lights needed didn't help the situation and it was a somewhat humid day to start with. If I were to build one it would have better ventilation!

I mentioned earlier that the place was slap-dash in construction. It seems that whatever architectural items Mr. Hammond collected that could be embedded in cement met that exact fate. Plaques, reliefs, carvings, anything and everything was placed in the walls as the building went up. I think that some of the Medieval doors that were collected were simply hung on the walls and led nowhere; they may have been only decorative in nature. There were furnishings placed in front of them.

Some of the parts that really interested me were the Gothic architectural details. Many of them were poured cement, exactly what I'd like to do. Some of the trefoil windows, arches, and spiral staircases were all poured segments and not carved from solid stone; a few were just solid cement. The walls could easily be constructed in modern times using Castlemagic's method, slipform or a combination thereof. The building is huge, but not that huge, the Chateau living area I would guess at 2000 square feet. The castle is probably close to that as well. The great-hall alone is 65 x 28 (100' high) and just under 2000 square feet alone, not including the little side rooms.


It was really quite helpful to see the scale of the construction, even the little passages that were only 2 feet wide (I measured them). I can see already what I've overdesigned space-wise in the buildings I've done. With this castle nearby, I may have to make another visit and spend a whole day there with a surreptitious measuring tape.

At any rate, here are some of the pictures I've taken. Unfortunately, I don't have a wide angle lens so some of the shots don't really give the big picture, and also the lighting was poor so I did my best to not use a flash. That means I had to hold the camera very still or rest it on something; for the shots I wanted that wasn't always an option, so there may be some blur in the pics.