The Castle On The Hill

There’s a castle in New London.

This was the announcement I made one afternoon when I posted a photo to the New London Patch’s Facebook, and it took off. People left comments about memories of the place and its current state, but far and away the leading reaction was surprise. A few lifelong residents were stunned that after however many years in a city measuring only six square miles, they had never known of the medieval ramparts in our midst.

This discovery came during a wave of unseasonable heat and at the end of the one weekday where I didn’t have an evening meeting to cover. The sun was still in the sky, there was a summery glow all around, and was beckoning. I decided it was time to put work on hold for a little while.

Well, maybe not right away. I don’t often make it to the southern end of the city, and I figured as long as I was there I would get some photos of the feature. This meant a pleasant walk along the Pequot Avenue beaches to the abandoned, possibly haunted mansion to grab some images.

On the way back, I decided to take a slightly different route to the beach and head through the short avenues of beach houses. Neptune Avenue and Ocean Avenue enclose a small portion of beachfront property, and I thought that Mott Avenue—which services the waterfront homes—would simply loop back to connect with Ocean Beach. It does so, but not before coming to an intersection with Elliott Avenue. And there, perched atop a small hill, was the castle.

It’s the last thing you expect to see among the coastal manors. A large stone structure with arched entrances, narrow windows, crenellations and a porch extending to the rear caught the retreating rays of sunlight. It also seemed like it was a remnant of the past; wires extended to the structure, but you could look right through it. It was a shell, usually a sign that a catastrophic fire has gutted the building.

The “castle,” I found via a story in a news archive, had been built for former Governor Thomas M. Waller. Or perhaps it’s just where he lived for awhile, as the city’s tax records put the construction date at 1850, just 10 years after Waller’s birth. For some time in its later life, the castle was the source of tensions in the neighborhood as college students started living there and other residents sought to zone such rentals out of the area.

I recently found that Jammin 107.7 shared the photo on their Facebook page and it got a good response there as well. “It was built to withstand dragon attacks,” one person suggested.

My favorite response has to be from a reader who shared a postcard showing the house in its prime. The castle commands its tiny hilltop, ivy growing up the side, a small turret jutting from the roof, and what looks like your everyday beach house kind of construction in the rear under the protection of the stone porch.

This would make the structure’s current ruinous appearance all the more depressing. But another reader assured me this is only its temporary state, and that the house is just in that ugly phase mid-restoration.

It’s just a short walk from your next visit to your beach, and well worth a look. Just watch out for the dragons.

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