The Castle in the Clouds

August 9, 2019

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Mummy and Daddy headed out early yesterday morning to see a CASTLE of sorts. It wasn’t a place for doggies so we stayed behind, which was fine by us since frankly, we were getting a little “road weary” and needed some down time at the YORKIE EXPRESS to recharge our batteries… PLUS, it was raining off and on, and the thought of getting wet wasn’t all that appealing to us! ?

Mummy had read about this big house called “Lucknow,” but most people referred to it as “The Castle in the Clouds,” and she wanted to see it! It turned out to be a 16-room mansion built in 1914 on 5,500 acres of beautiful forested land. Originally they had about 1,000 more acres but they sold off some of the land a long time ago. It was built in the Arts & Crafts style by Thomas Gustave Plant for his wife Olive, and it sits on a mountaintop in Moultonborough, New Hampshire overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee and the Ossipee Mountains. The house is clad is carefully fitted stone veneer that were hand chiseled by many, many stone masons working on the house. It would take one stone worker an entire day to cut and place just THREE STONES on this house!!! When you walk around the entire home it makes you shake your head to think of how long it took to just do the stone work! They had 1,000 men working on the house for 1 1/2 years. 1,000 men!!! Mummy said she has a hard time getting ONE MAN to come and fix our air-conditioner when it breaks!!!!

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The front door (seen in the picture) as well as all of the exposed beams in the house, have a dimpled appearance. This is made by carefully hand chiseling the wood to get this effect and while very beautiful, is extremely time consuming. Mummy said that the back yard was like a little spot of HEAVEN! There were flowers everywhere, and planters bordering the edge of the yard that were made of stone and shaped like CASTLES… OH MY GOSH HOW ADORABLE!!! The view was truly one from the clouds, where you looked down to Lake Winnipesaukee far, far out on the horizon. This is the largest lake in all of New Hampshire. It is 21-miles long, varies from 1-9 miles in width and has a maximum depth of 180-feet!!! WOW THAT IS REALLY DEEP! There are at least 264 islands in the lake, half of which are less than 1/4 of an acre. If you wanted to drive around the whole thing… it is about 63 miles… just so you know. And one last thing, there is a movie called, “What About Bob?” that features this lake. In the movie, this crazy man named Bob, carries his pet goldfish around with him in a jar hung around his neck… and Daddy wanted to go into town and get a goldfish….Mummy stopped him RIGHT THERE and said she wanted NO PART of this activity he was planning! ????

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Inside the house there was lots of wood, stained in a warm, brown finish and stained glass windows in many rooms with several leaded glass panels even on the ceilings… the overall effect was a very comfortable, homey place rather than a cold mansion. The rooms were not humongous in size but they were certainly large! The attention to detail was obvious and even back then, in 1914, the house included several innovations that were considered rare… like special interlocking kitchen tiles, the “needle” showers, ammonia-brine refrigeration, house-wide interphone system and even central vac! In one of the pictures Mummy has included a picture of the “needle” shower. This was the description of this contraption in the bathroom: The wraparound arms feature tiny pinholes that spray jets of water around the user’s torso area. These little sprays of water strike the kidney area, ribcage, liver or spine like little “needles,” providing an energizing “massage” for the internal organs. It was thought to be invigorating and therapeutic, and in 1914 it was still believed that women were fragile and delicate, and showering might be harmful to them because their delicate constitutions could not withstand the rigors of shower bathing!!! This procedure should only be resorted to under the advice of a physician! Typically, only the wealthy had showers in their homes up until the 1920’s. This type of shower would have cost between $300-$500. (The Lucknow mansion had THREE of these “needle” showers!) The master bathroom which is also pictured, was considered the epitome of the early 20th-century “Sanitary Bathroom” with the tiled walls and floors, 2 separate toilets in private rooms, 2 sinks, a deep tub and a “needle” shower.

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The center grouping of pictures includes Mummy and Daddy’s trip to the estate’s “Carriage House,” which was once the beautiful stables with brick floors and stained stalls with iron dividers for the horses. It has now been converted into a charming restaurant where they stopped for lunch following their tour! The “stall” they ate in even included the original corner horse  trough! Mummy chose the “Tom Foolery” sandwich (I have NO IDEA where that name came from ??❤️) and consisted of oven roasted turkey, warm brie cheese, cranberry aioli and applewood bacon on grilled bread! Now THIS is when I wished I was with her!!! She said that when we get back home she is going to try and recreate this, because it was simply DE-LICIOUS!!! ????

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The end of the Thomas Plant story is sort of sad. He ended up losing all of his money due to bad investments. ??? The house was foreclosed on but he was allowed to keep living there for some reason… I mean, you KNOW that would never happen today! And then he had to have surgery for something and died from complications. Olive moved back to Illinois where she was originally from, to live with relatives, and the new owners moved into Lucknow. But… to this day, there still stands a retirement home that he built way back at the turn of the century to house the elderly who had nowhere to go. So his legacy does still continue, and he is highly thought of in the community for his generous, giving spirit. The Castle in the Clouds is a place that you will definitely want to visit on your next trip through New Hampshire! ?❤️?❤️?