I wrote in my previous mountain posts about an idea to build a castle which would sit on top. I’ve always loved castles and there’s no shortage of inspiration, so after spending a few weeks collecting a box full of light grey bricks it was time to get stuck in.
I’m actually finishing off this post almost a year after I originally wrote it, and a lot has changed in that time; the castle has now moved to the other side of the room but it does still stand at the time of writing.
The bulk of the structure came together over the course of a few weeks in November 2020. I didn’t have much of a clue as to how big the build would end up being when I first started but it was a really fun process getting to experiment with various techniques for the walls and corners.
I started with one corner and worked my way along the front facade first. The basic idea was totally enclosed courtyard with corridors running through all the walls, and big flappy access doors on the sides to let me move minifigs around. I also wanted a working portcullis!
First shot of the new castle on top of the new mountain
However much fun the front was to design and build, I quickly realised the sides weren’t going to be as enjoyable. The back and left hand side are completely blocked by the walls, and I still needed some way to get access to the inside. I decided on building a massive wooden gate into the right hand side which would at least let me see into the courtyard, although looking back I’ve never really been happy with how this turned out. It still looked imposing though which was good enough for the time.
I pressed on and a couple of weeks later had finished building up the rest of the walls. God knows how many bricks this ended up using, but I burnt though basically my entire collection of light grey masonry bricks in the process.
All four walls more or less complete
It was worth it though to finally see it perched on top of the mountain! Looking back almost a year later, I’d forgotten how ridiculous this project was at the time. It’s likely the castle won’t be around much longer, at least not in its current form, but I learned a lot from the process of building it and if I had more room to play with it’s definitely something I’d like to do more of. Space is at a real premium in my LEGO room though and there’s so much dead space in the courtyard that I can’t really justify keeping it unfortunately.
