Uhuburg Castle

Here's a castle being built by the owner using AAC blocks. It's called Uhuburg Castle. It seems to exist on Facebook only as far as a website goes, but you can see a lot of pictures of the construction process without needing an account. There seem to be quite a few new castles popping up on the web, I'm not sure if it's a desire for publicity or a sign of economic improvement. The vast majority are of the concrete block construction with a flat front and flanking round turrets at the corners. I can't tell if they're owner built, likely not, so I'm not featuring them here. A visit to the DuPont Castle website will have a good listing of them. At any rate, this is the only castle being built with AAC block that I know of.

Castle Northmoor

Castle Northmoor has been built by Harlan Shaver and is near Kansas City.  Looks like he started the project in the early '80s.  Not a whole lot of information about the project itself, but the tower looks like an addition to a normal house.  The article here implies that Mr. Shaver built most or all of the structure himself.  Pretty cool castle turret!

This is a unique castle, and a mine to boot

Hard Luck Mine Castle.  An owner built castle and a mine with a slightly industrial look, lots of metal fixtures.  For sale too.

Stone Gate Castle, er... Manor I mean.

Had some spare time today while the kid was taking a nap to peruse the web to see if any new castles had come out of the closet and into the light of the web, sure enough I found one.  I must admit that the site calls it a "manor" and not a castle, but I figure it looks like a little castle to me. The site needs some work (or at least it displays poorly on Chrome), but the owners apparently hold classes that teach stonework and stained glass amongst other things.  I really like the interior, especially the great hall.


Photo from Stone Gate Manor site.

Adirondack Castle Resurrected? (Leary Castle)

Back in February I posted a castle in the Adirondacks that a reader had found for sale.  Just recently another reader stopped by and commented that she'd found a blog featuring the very same castle!  It looks to have been purchased after the original owner-builder's death by the family that is working on it now.  Pretty cool! 

Looks like the castle is called the "Leary Castle".  I'll send them a hello message and see if they want to share any info about their project.

Thanks, Fionnait!

(Image from the Leary Castle Blog.)

Drafty Manor: A modified house

Drafty manor is a house that has been modified to look like a castle (they're not done yet!) So far, they've got a tower up and are going to finish the rest of the job at some future time.

Backyard Folly

This isn't really a castle, but it could be the full beginnings of one. I'm not sure who put this site together, but the construction photos are great. Take a look at how the "ruins" were built and put together. The construction of the spiral staircase is great to see, and pretty much how you'd do it yourself if you weren't using cut stone. The arch supports that held up the stone and brickwork during construction is precisely what you see in some of the construction photos over at castlemagic.com. Seeing the progress of the construction is great; while this is a simplification , you'd obviously need to take all of the other parts of homebuilding into consideration such as plumbing, code, and such, this is pretty much how one would go about building a castle with a spiral staircase and arched doorways.

EDIT: I discovered that the site owner builds beautiful suits of armor.

Mother Earth News Article

An article of from Mother Earth News on a couple that throws urban life to the wind and heads off into the woods to build a "castle".

Well, it's not exactly a castle, but they did build it themselves. They've gone to the extremes of living without many modern conveniences, but that does not detract from creating their own home. It's a short article but interesting.

Castle Construction Technique

Consider a slipform technique.

Mother Earth News is a "Green" site that can border on the far reaches of the "granola" lifestyle. Depending on your personal philosophy, it may or may not be your cup of tea, but take a look anyway. They have lots of information that really doesn't apply to castle building ( a castle made of cob is asking for disaster due to collapse...). That doesn't mean they don't have something good and useful to say that could be used by a potential castle builder. Featured in this article is a woman who built her own house using the slipform method and stone using a book from Mother Earth News as a guide. This is an alternative to the standard cement block wall or the cost of a pure stone wall.

There are lots of good and informative articles as well as videos and books for purchase on the Mother Earth News website that pertain to building with stone, various methods of construction, and how to maximize the energy efficiency of your project. I'd recommend taking a look around and checking on different methods available that you can do yourself, may reduce the initial costs of construction, or may reduce the cost of environmental impact and cost to yourself in the long run.