Early Castles

I receive numerous requests from novice but enthusiastic potential castle builders for information and suggestions about smaller castles on which they would like to hone their skills while they are slowly gathering the Lego® bricks necessary for larger projects. When I started building model castles in 1986, I had relatively few gray Lego bricks, not a clue about how to build a castle, and pretty limited research information - but my enthusiasm resulted in 23 castles the first three years. Even today my mind boggles at the notion that I began by building a little model of the triangular Caerlaverock in southern Scotland out of square and rectangular Legos.

Many of my subsequent castles were fairly small and easy to build - I'd have had to retire to build 8 castles a year nowadays! But my earlier projects gave me wonderful experience, and I heartily recommend a few small castles for 'practice'. Many of the castles I love the most, and therefore built early, I have redone on a larger and often more accurate scale, with only a 'number' and one photo of the "First Try" available on the castle's page...

So in this section I'm going to try to provide more pictures of my early castles, and the plans for them, to assist new builders. Remember that my early plans were often primitive, and side elevations often non-existant or done on a squatty 1:1 scale, as compared to my current and more accurate 1:1 1/5th scale [5/16th inch wide versus 3/8th inch tall]. Please email me if you have any specific problems or questions...AND I'll be happy to post a picture of any of your completed castle projects on a new Castle Builders' Page, yet to be created since I have no pictures from anyone to date!

The possibilites are listed below. Remember to see the Main Page for photos and plans of the actual castles. And also don't forget the several other small castles and towers on the Main Page in addition to Provins. They are Etampes & Houdan (also in France), Castell Coch (Wales), Chipchase, Appleby & Clifford's Tower (England), Clara & Ballytarsna (Ireland) and Claypotts, Amisfield, Elphinstone & Levan (Scotland). Good luck!!

#4 Château de Provins This castle is available from the main page under 'France'. I have not been able to design a larger version in Lego that's any better than the original. The roofs of my model are cut from heavy file folder paper, magic-markered to look like a roof, and taped into an octagonal "cone". The tower roofs I made for Muiderslot [The Netherlands] are the next step in roof design.

#5 Castle Rising You'll notice a significant difference between this first model of the Keep and the second, located on the Main Page (in addition to the neat detail on the larger version). In the model here the height of the forebuilding, reached by the protected stairway, matches that of the Keep - also matching the photograph to the right. A reference, which I now cannot locate, stated that the third floor of the forebuilding was a later addition, and plain and ugly to boot, so I left it out of the later model.


South View	West View	1986 Lego Plan	Lego Top Down Plan

#6 Newcastle-upon-Tyne This castle is so classic I couldn't help building it again when I had more Legos, but I always liked this little model. It could be built to split in half, revealing all the floors, but that would take a lot more bricks (and defeat the purpose of building a small starter castle?) I would now use 45º 2x2 double convex bricks for the outer corners of the turrets - I had none in light gray when I first built this model.


Southeast View	East View	Northeast View	West View	Top View	Entrance View


Ground Floor Plan	1st Floor Plan	2nd Floor Plan	3rd Floor Plan	4th Floor Plan	Battlement Plan

#7 Nunney Tower This castle, like #4 Provins, was also capped with cardboard roofs magic-markered red in an attempt to match the red of the Lego roof bricks. Note that the second model used black sloped bricks, then more readily available.


Northwest View	Northeast View	1986 Lego Plans	Roof Plan Details

#8 Rochester Keep This castle has always been one of my favorites, with its tall turrets and impressive forebuilding, entered by a drawbridge. The first model (see below) incorporated more than three dozen gray wall sections, allowing construction of a tower which did not overwhelm my then moderate supply of gray bricks. It also allowed "stones" to appear on the walls of the Keep here and there.


Northwest View	Southeast View	North View	View from above


1986 Lego Plan	West Elevation	North Elevation	East Elevation	South Elevation	Roof Cross Section

#10 Hermitage Castle This castle is so impressive, both in person and on the printed page, that I was pleased to build it a second time - but my first effort was one of my best early castles. A model built by you should probably utilize black roof tiles. Only red slopes were available in large numbers in lots of different sizes and shapes in 1987.


Southeast View	Northeast View	1987 Lego Plan	1987 Top Down

#14 Dover Keep My only regret about this early model is that I didn't own the gray 75 degree 2x3x2 double convex slopes necessary for the batter around the base of the tower. I substituted black, which I had, and it just looked dorky...


Southeast View	Northeast View	1988 Lego Plan	Northwest Elevation

#22 Bolton Castle This castle is pretty massive for the beginners section, even though the second attempt was on a really magnificent scale. However, Bolton is a powerful and enticing project in any size, and might work really well as a third or fourth castle.


East Northeast View	South View	1988 Lego Plan	East Elevation

#31 Bunratty Castle This castle was visited a couple years ago by my sister-in-law Elaine and her daughter Kim. They were kind enough to bring me not only snapshots of the castle, but the cutaway placemat (heavily "doctored" by me) which is on the Main Page. There are medieval banquets here "knightly" as well as many weddings at the castle. I apologize for two puns in one paragraph!


South Southwest View	Northwest View	South View	1990 Lego Plan