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We hope to be self-supporting through
the following activities:
1. The Royal Suite Experience hosted 4 to 6 times per year at
a price between $10,000 and $100,000, depending on how good we
get at it, demand, and how much trouble it is.
2. Castle apartment rentals and leases, prices as yet undetermined.
3. Facility rental by groups and organizations for parties, events,
weddings, etc..
4. Hosting of classes teaching various skills, crafts and arts
associated with the Middle Ages to include weaving and associated
skills, dyeing, music, dance, calligraphy, metal working, armor
construction, Medieval wood working, Medieval combat and jousting,
clothing construction, food storage, architecture, stone working,
Medieval social structure and systems, etc..
5. Rental of housing or workshop space in the village.
6. Tavern/inn proceeds.
7. Sale of excess garden, field and orchard produce.
8. Tours.
9. Participating in arrangements with educational institutions
whereby students of Medieval Studies could participate in a field
study program.
10. Production and sales of video and audio presentations concerning
activities associated with Castle Thornwood.
11. Anything else we can think of or is suggested to us that
looks legal and feasible.
(All measurements are approximate, still!) Castle Thornwood overall
will be rectangular, 160' East to West and 120' North to South.
The walls will be 25' high with the roof peaks of the buildings
inside at 35', except for the Great Hall, which will reach 45'.
There will be 3 20' diameter, 60' towers on the NE, SE and SW
corners. The NW corner will be the Gatehouse with twin, 15' diameter
towers, a 12' wide and 16' tall entrance, gates, portculis, and
a drawbridge over a dry moat (well, damp maybe). Plan
View.
The Castle foundation will be a rebar reinforced concrete double
footing: the outside footing will be 2' wide and 2' deep, the
inside footing will be 16" wide and 2' deep. On top of the
outside footing will be an 18" reinforced concrete wall
and on the inside footing the wall will be 1' thick, with 3.5'
separating the two walls for a total of 6' from outside face
to inside face. The two walls will be joined at 8' to 10' intervals
by 8" thick reinforced concrete walls, the voids to be filled
with rubble. The two walls will continue upwards to a height
of 35' above the footings, to where the wall walk will begin.
The concrete on the outside of the castle
will be striated to resemble cut stone. There will be a dry moat
with roads along the north and west sides.
Under the 60'X80' courtyard will be
the main cistern. It will be of reinforced concrete and its walls
will be accessible through and connected to vaulted walkways
from the basement storerooms. The cistern will have 5' of fill
on top of it to keep it, for the most part, below the frost line.
Inflow will be piped in from roof collection points, possibly
a well, and our water processing plant. Water will be pumped
up to holding tanks in the towers for a gravity-fed water system.
Overflow from the cistern will be fed into the slough south of
the castle.
The courtyard will be sand and gravel, possibly cobbled or stone
paved.
Insulating the rooms of the structures inside the castle walls
from the walls themselves will be 2' of straw bales or paper
bales, or some equivalent sort of insulation. (We want the look
of a real castle, not necessarily the feel of it.) The walls
will then be lathed and plastered. There will be no windows to
the outside of the castle on the ground floor; there will be
a few arrow-slit type 4' tall windows (maybe 1' wide though,
and glassed) looking out of the castle from the second floor
height along the East and West walls. The South wall will have
more of these windows but larger and with mural seating alcoves
in the walls, possibly as a later, Elizabethan modification to
the original fortification.
The Great Hall will be on the East side of the castle. It will
be 40' wide and 80' long with a large open-front fireplace in
the center of the East wall. It will be hammer-beam construction,
43' tall in the center, with 10' wide galleries along the sides
8' off the floor. The floor will be stone with plenum piping
for warm air piped from return vents in the ceiling and air piped
through the fireplace walls. We're thinking about having trap-door
hidden gas hookups in the middle top and bottom thirds of the
Hall so as to augment winter heating with floor braziers (possibly
adding some wood to the fires to get that authentic choking smoke
effect...)
Light for the Hall will be from the aforementioned slit windows
to the East out of the second floor height of the hall, from
tall, relatively narrow, openable and shuttered windows looking
onto the courtyard at the 1st and 2nd floor levels, and from
one large (possibly stained glass) window in the top of the South
wall. There will be a double system of alternate lighting: a
few large wall sconces for large candles (it turns out that all
those lovely candles and torches on the walls in movie castles
are imaginary, that the inhabitants actually had to do with candles
carried about in candle holders! Winters are going to be dark,
indeed!), and, for thorough cleaning and emergencies, bright
electric lighting ordinarily hidden decoratively away.
The Great Kitchen will be South of the Great Hall. It will be
thoroughly modern, antiseptic, well lit, of commercial grade,
20'X20', with 2 large ovens, a large microwave oven, 2 full sinks,
2 refrigerators and 1 full size freezer, a commercial size dishwasher,
and lots of counter and storage space. There will be a 20'X20'
storage area under the kitchen including a wine cellar.
The NE tower and adjacent 2nd floor space to the west of the
tower will be a "Royalty Suite". The rooms there will
be set up as authentically as possible, while building in as
much comfort as possible, to be rooms in which travelling royalty
would have expected to sleep, hold audiences, and entertain while
visiting loyal land holders. Yes, there will be chamber pots,
in "close stools" for our "royalty" (but
there will also be the option of a "garderobe" that
just happens to be connected to the castle's sewage system).
We would like to provide appropriate clothing that the retinue
would have brought, appropriate writing materials and table for
the producing of documents or missives, bathing facilities, etc..
We plan to offer these rooms on a limited basis, along with our
services as local land holder hosts and household, and retinue,
to people interested in a short term royal experience. For their
stay we would endeavor to provide as authentic a "living
history" experience as we can, however without most of the
truly awful aspects of actually living in the Middle Ages: a
minimum of rats, lice, uncleanliness, and what we, today, would
deem cruelty.
Some of the activities we have in mind for "The Royal Experience"
are: participating in the various ordinary pastimes ocurring
(weaving, embroidery, weapons repair and construction, combat
practice, horse training and exercising, music, overseeing of
house, grounds and fields), ordinary meals (at least, as ordinary
as loyal landholders would have prepared for their royal guests
on non-feast days), a "court" where the "royalty"
could decide matters of justice, one all-out feast with authentic
food and rigamarol, possibly a hunt (a small one for birds or
rabbits on the 80 acres, some more elaborate simulated affair
with horses and a trip down to the Hay Flats Recreation Area,
or a real one with tags, guides, airplanes, the whole 9 yards,
for moose, caribou or deer, during hunting season, of course),
and/or whatever else we can come up with.
The chapel will be in the 2nd floor of the SE tower.
The ground floor rooms on the West and South sides of the courtyard
will be workshops, store rooms, animal facilities, and a changing
room and shower for visitors participating in strenuous activities.
The workshops will include metal and woodworking, flax and wool
processing, crop processing (storage will be in the basement),
and possibly a ceramics shop. Animal facilities will include
stalls for 3 horses and the related storage necessary, and chicken
and rabbit facilities. There will be a store room for armor and
weapons associated with Medieval combat re-creation. (Armor and
weapon replicas will be here and there, wherever they ought to
be in the castle.)
On the 2nd floor of the south side of the courtyard will be a
15'X80' hall or series of rooms with equipment and storage for
weaving, sewing, music, and books. One scenario for this space
is an immensely long library with looms, fabric, tables, instruments,
and mural seating alcoves with windows to the south and windows
and doors to a 5' wide walkway extending the length of the room
along the courtyard.
That walkway would continue along the west side of the courtyard
at the 2nd floor level. The walkway will have a 3.5' railing
with posts up to the roof overhang. There will be a fold down
wall stored folded up into the ceiling of the walkway in the
summer, which will be let down to become an insulated, windowed
wall along the courtyard side of the walkway in the winter.
The rooms/apartments on the 2nd floor on the north and west sides
of the castle, and the ground floor of the north side, will be
available in a variety of arrangements to include condominium
style ownership, leasing, rental, hostel style rental, and bed
and breakfast style rental. There will be a public dress code
associated with any type of inhabitance, with appropriate clothing
provided for guests, visitors and short term rentals.
The rooms will be fitted out with varying sets of Medieval, as
well as modern (discreetly) accoutrements: fireplaces (modern,
efficient woodstoves to cut down on the speed with which we use
up our wood pile and lot), candle holders with electric lighting
also available, chamber pots with composting toilets or "modern
plumbing" also available, containers for bathing and shower/bath
facilities also available, modern kitchens, wiring for appliances,
computers, televisions, telephones, etc.. Some of the apartments
will have their own laundry facilities, some will depend on a
communal laundry room. All of the rooms will be temperature and
sound insulated with strawbales, or equivalent R and sound value
materials.
The rooms in the SE corner and tower of the castle are reserved
already :)
Either on the ground floor of the SE tower, or in a structure
against the outside of the south wall, will be our sewage/water
treatment plant. This will be a Living Machine(tm) built by Living Technologies
Inc. and operated by us as trained by them.
Outside the walls of the castle to the south will be a walled,
terraced garden with a small orchard.
Across the road from the Gatehouse will be a tavern/inn. Other
structures entailing housing, shops, workshops, stables, garages
for the vehicles of the people living/staying in the castle,
or whatever else people think up will make up a small village
around the tavern. We envision housing students of the Middle
Ages, craftsmen, families interested in Medieval rural life,
vacationers with less budget than necessary for staying in the
castle, clubs or other groups interested in participating in
our project on a short term basis, gardeners with an interest
in the specific crops we will be working with, people interested
in working with the animals associated with this project, and
interested passers-by. As in the castle itself there will be
a dress code, with appropriate clothing available for purchase
or rent.
The structures of the village will be of a variety of materials
and construction techniques exploring the options available to
our northern climate.
To the east and west of the castle will be fields, gardens, orchards,
and animal enclosures. We envision crops including flax (oilseed
and fiber), peas, barley, timothy, clover, potatoes (we know
they're not period, but they grow so well here!), oats, cabbage
and assorted other garden vegetables. Animals we expect to have
are goats, geese, pigs, a cow or two, and sheep. The animal enclosures
will be included in the crop field rotation. Animal manures and
crop byproducts will be composted and religiously kept from fouling
the slough to the south of the property. We intend to be a certifiably
organic operation.
North of the castle and east of the village area will be a grassed
open area available for grazing, but also available for encampments
of Medieval ReCreationists, like the Society for Creative Anachronism,
or other groups interested in period encampments. One time period
of the summer (a weekend, or maybe a week) Thornwood will host
a Medieval Faire, to which attendance will be limited due to
the limited access and parking that will be available.
The remainder of the 80 acres will be maintained in its current,
virgin wood condition as much as possible by the construction
of trails and encouraging residents and visitors to stay on the
trails in their strolls through the forest. We will practice
conscientious forest management and studied non-management so
as to, hopefully, retain most of the current wild life and forest
character, while providing for our wood burning and construction
needs onsite.
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