Going to a wedding....

Here at Thornewood Castle!

So excited to go here. I am definitely bringing my camera and taking loads of pic of this baby. It has a 500 yr. old Grand Stairway, Sunken English garden, fern garden, statuary, Medieval stain glass windows, it's next to a Lake, its a B&B and it has some really fancy interior. Are you kidding me? Picture gallore! I put a lil bit of the history on the bottom of the post. Interesting huh?

Picture of the Castle below right after it was built.
Thornewood Castle, a magnificent three-story manor home dating from the turn of the century, offers over 27,000 square feet of living space, graciously arranged under one tile roof. Boasting 54 rooms, including 22 bedrooms and 22 baths, this English Tudor/Gothic mansion is one of the few genuine private castles in the United States. Thornewood Castle was built to the specifications of Mr. Chester Thorne, one of the founders of the Port of Tacoma, in beautiful Washington State. His fascination with the grandeur of the old English estate led him to design his dream house. Kirtland Kelsey Cutter, one of America's most gifted architects of that era, converted this dream into the once-in-a-lifetime estate.

Built to last the centuries, Thornewood Castle is constructed with concrete and steel on a solid three-foot-thick foundation. Exterior walls are brick and concrete with steel reinforcement. The floors are ten inches of concrete. Construction took three years to complete, from 1908 to 1911, with many of the materials, including the brick, oak paneling, oak staircase and the medieval stained glass coming from a castle in Europe. Three ships were commissioned to transport these building supplies around Cape Horn to the Pacific Northwest.

The red brick facing on the outside of the estate was imported from Wales. A massive grand staircase and solid oak doors, both wood-pegged by old world craftsmen, represents only a few of the interior finishes imported to the castle from a 15th century mansion in England. A priceless collection of rare artwork, hand painted onto glass surrounded by panes of crystal, are mounted in windows throughout the estate. Created in the 15th to 17th centuries, they were previously owned by an English duke who spent 40 years collecting the lost art.