DuPont Castle

DuPont Castle is an owner built castle in W. Virginia.

I'm kind of surprised that, despite my giving credit to James D.'s DuPont Castle website for the inspiration to start this website, I haven't given the site the good post it deserves. Well, here it is. DuPont Castle is a truly large castle with an impressive long range plan; the castle and grounds will be quite the attraction in its finished state. A main keep, apartments, workshop, outbuildings and a skirt wall are all on the drawing board, and a computer created concept picture shows the end goal of the project. About as close to a real castle design as one can might be willing to build on their own.

One of the other great features of DuPont Castle's website is the amount of information regarding other castles around the US and Canada. The "castles" vary from water towers to civic buildings, private residences to mansions. The list contains more than 300 structures and also has links to other modern castlebuilders websites.

DuPont Castle's construction progress is very well documented with lots of pictures of the structure as it is being built; from the foundation to the framing and roofing of the building. You can really see the progress. The owners have been building the castle mostly themselves but have had the help of friends and few donations as well. Stop by and take a look at the site, you can really see how a modern castle is being built, one block at a time. I'd bug him for an "interview", but most of the questions I'd ask are already answered on his Dupont Castle FAQ.

Best of luck to to James D. and Castle DuPont, thanks for the encouragment!

Welcome!

Welcome to a blog that is dedicated to the people that dream of living in their own honest-to-goodness castle. One of the first themes for the the reason this site came about was the simple reason that we live in an area of the country where house prices are outrageous, and even though we are homeowners, we have a desire to have a totally unique home that hopefully can be paid in full before we retire; it just happens that we'd like a castle!

This plays into the second part of the theme for this blog, in that we hope to feature owner built castles, or at least castles that had heavy input from owners along with some amount if direct involvement of the construction, this site by no means excludes castles that aren't built 100% by the onwner. These castles need not be massive 50-room luxury motte-and-bailey type castles, they could easily be a suburban home that has had a serious makeover.

The final theme for the material presented here will be the environment. I don't mean rants about tree-hugging and saving the whales (though those are honorable and necessary professions, just not the ranting bit..) but I do mean green construction and energy saving devices. This covers anything from thick-walled heavily insulated buildings (say, like...a castle?) to passive solar heat and hot water.

To sum up: Live in an affordable, energy efficient DIY castle.

I'll provide links to any castle sites on the web that I find, along with links to anyone who professes to build or provide services related to castlebuilding such as designers or engineers, and any suppliers of "castle-like" products such as leaded-glass, furnishings, or whatever.

I hope that anybody who happens across this blog will also submit any information they might find, such as products or services used, or castles they may have built as well. I also am willing to have a reciprocal link exchange upon request and agreement.