America’s most famous Sherlock Holmes built a real castle above the Connecticut River

A real castle hidden in plain sight

There’s a 14,000-square-foot stone castle sitting 200 feet above the Connecticut River, and most people have never heard of it.

Gillette Castle State Park spreads across 184 acres of woodland in East Haddam and Lyme, Connecticut, and about 300,000 people make the trip each year.

The man who built it was one of the biggest stars of his era, and what he left behind is stranger and more interesting than any stage set he ever performed on.

The famous actor who played Sherlock Holmes

William Hooker Gillette was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1853, and by the turn of the century, he had become one of the most recognized actors in America.

Starting in 1899, he played Sherlock Holmes on stage and became so associated with the role that the image most people carry of Holmes today, the deerstalker cap, the curved pipe, came largely from him.

He didn’t just perform the character. He shaped what the character looked like for the next hundred years.

How Gillette found his cliff above the river

Gillette traveled the Connecticut River on his houseboat, the Aunt Polly, and that’s how he found the Seven Sisters, a chain of hills running along the river’s edge.

He had originally planned to build on Long Island, but when he spotted the southernmost hill in the chain, that was the end of the Long Island plan.

He designed the castle himself, oversaw every step of construction, and kept making changes and improvements until he died.

Five years and 20 workers to raise the walls

Construction ran from 1914 to 1919. A crew of 20 workers built the castle from local Connecticut fieldstone set over a steel framework, so the walls look rough and medieval but the bones underneath are solid.

The interior woodwork is hand-hewn southern white oak, and the finished building came out to three stories plus a tower, with 24 rooms total.

The castle has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986.

Not one of the 47 doors opens the same way

Every door in the castle has a hand-carved wooden latch, and no two are alike. Some of them work like puzzles, with trick locks that take a moment to figure out.

Gillette designed all the furniture and fixtures himself, including built-in couches and a dining table that slides along floor tracks. Even the light switches are carved from wood.

The whole interior reflects someone who had very specific ideas about how a room should work.

The mirrors that let Gillette spy on his own guests

Above the great hall, Gillette installed a series of mirrors angled so he could watch visitors from his bedroom without being seen. A secret door near the staircase let him appear suddenly in a room.

A hidden room elsewhere in the castle is only accessible by pulling down a handle that reveals a staircase behind the wall.

The second-floor ceilings are notably low, possibly designed so that guests looking up would see Gillette at a more commanding height.

The private railroad that ran along the cliffs

Gillette built a three-mile-long narrow-gauge railroad across the property, complete with switches, trestles, bridges, and a tunnel.

He ran both a steam engine and an electric engine on the line, and guests reportedly including Albert Einstein, Helen Hayes, and Charlie Chaplin rode it along the cliffs above the river.

The railroad is gone now, but the two engines survived and sit on display at the park’s Visitor’s Center, where you can get a close look at both.

Walk the old rail bed through a 75-foot tunnel

The tracks came out but the path stayed. Today the old rail bed runs as walking trails through the park, and the purple trail follows the original railroad route over footbridges and trestles.

At one point it takes you through a 75-foot-long train tunnel that’s dark enough to make you slow down. The blue trail leads to the remains of the Aunt Polly, Gillette’s houseboat, which burned in 1932.

The wreck sits underwater and is one of only two underwater preserves in the state, best seen at low tide.

River views that look the same as they did 100 years ago

From the castle terrace, you can look out over the Lower Connecticut River Valley and see almost no development on the far bank.

The Connecticut River is the only major river in the northeastern United States without a large city or port at its mouth, and that’s exactly why the view holds.

The undeveloped riverbanks haven’t changed much in a century. Benches and picnic tables are set along the trails if you want to sit with the view for a while.

Gillette’s train station is now a picnic pavilion

The stone and wood structure Gillette called his Grand Central Station, his private train stop on the property, now serves as the park’s picnic pavilion. It faces the river.

Up on the roof, a metal cat figure keeps watch, a nod to the fact that Gillette shared his castle with as many as 17 cats at one time and designed special toys for them.

The Visitor’s Center sits nearby, with the restored locomotives and a small museum covering the castle’s history.

What Gillette’s will said about who could have the castle

Gillette died in 1937 with no wife and no children.

His will specified that the property should not fall into the hands of any “blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.”

Connecticut took that seriously, bought the property in 1943, and turned it into a state park. After an $11 million restoration, the castle reopened in 2002, and it’s been welcoming visitors ever since.

Arrive by one of Connecticut’s oldest ferries

One of the more interesting ways to reach the park is the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry, which has been crossing the Connecticut River since 1769, making it the second oldest continuously operating ferry in the state.

The current boat, the Selden III, carries eight or nine cars and 49 passengers, and the eastern landing sits right at the base of the hill below the castle.

The ferry runs April through November, on demand during operating hours.

Visit Gillette Castle State Park in Connecticut

To get there, head to 67 River Road in East Haddam. The park grounds are open daily from 8 a.m. to sunset year-round and free to enter.

Castle tours are self-guided and run about an hour.

Admission runs $6 for visitors 13 and up, $2 for children ages 6 to 12, and free for kids five and under.

Tours run daily from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, then on weekends and holidays through Columbus Day, and again on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from Thanksgiving through the Sunday before Christmas.

Time slots fill fast, so book in advance.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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