Gillette Castle State Park

State Park On A Bluff Above The Connecticut River; The 24 Room Fieldstone House Built Between 1914 And 1919 By William Gillette, The Actor Who Defined Sherlock Holmes On Stage, And Filled With His Own Puzzle Locks And Hidden Mechanisms · East Haddam, Connecticut

William Gillette played Sherlock Holmes more than a thousand times on stage, wrote the play that gave the character the deerstalker and the curved pipe, and made enough money from it to build whatever he liked. What he liked was this: a twenty-four room house of local fieldstone on a bluff above the Connecticut River, built between 1914 and 1919 and designed entirely by him, down to forty-seven doors each with a different hand-carved wooden puzzle lock. There are hidden mirrors so he could see who had arrived, a secret room, built-in furniture on tracks and a table that moves on rails. He also laid a three-mile narrow-gauge railway around the grounds and drove it himself. He died in 1937 leaving a will forbidding the place from falling into the hands of any blithering saphead, and the state bought it in 1943. The grounds and the river terrace are free and open every day of the year; the castle interior is seasonal and ticketed, which is the split to check before setting out.

67 River Road, East Haddam, East Haddam, Connecticut, 06423, United States

THE GROUNDS ARE OPEN ALL YEAR, free, from dawn to dusk, and the trails and the river overlook can be walked whenever. THE CASTLE INTERIOR IS SEASONAL AND TICKETED, generally open daily from late spring to early autumn and then weekends only into the autumn, closing for the winter apart from a Christmas opening in some years. That split is the thing to check before driving out.

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