Creating the Castle
by Nancy Northcott
& Jeanne Adams
~
Thanks for having us, PJ, and hi to everybody!
We’ve had great fun playing in our imaginary castle with our
buddies Caren Crane, Seressia Glass, Donna MacMeans, Gail Z. Martin (a/k/a
Morgan Brice), and Anna Sugden. All of us wrote novellas for last year’s Christmas at Caynham Castle. This year,
we also have a Halloween anthology, Trick
or Treat at Caynham Castle. Only Caren, and Gail, wearing her Morgan Brice
hat, Jeanne, and Nancy had room in our schedules for Halloween, so we’re the
only ones in this anthology.
Creating the castle was a fun process too. It involved lots
of back-and-forth, tailoring the place to the story needs. As we launch the
Halloween anthology, we thought readers might enjoy a look behind the scenes of
the castle’s birth.
Nancy: At the Rust
City reader event a couple of years ago, I saw a book on Amazon featuring
holiday stories in a common location. I love holiday anthologies and have read
many centered around events like balls or fairs or house parties. The common
location, though, clicked with me in a way the others hadn’t. I don’t know any
romance readers who don’t love castles, including me, so I naturally thought of
a castle.
Since Caren and Donna were also
at that conference, I floated the idea by them. They were up for that. I also
reached out to other writers whose work I enjoy. We ended up with a great group.
Jeanne, being Jeanne, immediately offered to do maps and diagrams.
Jeanne: It’s the
former designer/draftsperson in me, Nancy! (Also because I’m a glutton for
punishment.) Like Nancy, I adore castles, and the chance to literally create
the design for this castle? That was too much fun to resist. Besides, we needed
a common template from which to work. Between the basic outlines of the castle
itself, we also needed to create common timelines so we all cohesively had
something – the Halloween Ball, Bonfire Night, The Frost and Flame Ball, skating
on the moat – happening at the same time. We wanted the reader to be immersed
in the world with us.
Nancy: I went to
Ludlow, a castle I love, and took more photos than any sane human could
possibly want. While we took Ludlow as our inspiration, we also built Caynham
Castle from others we’d visited in person or in photos and tailored it to
story needs.
Below is the round chapel, which
we all loved. It’s all that remains of the original chapel, which extended back
in a rectangle from this circular part to the curtain wall.
Jeanne: We did all
love Ludlow’s chapel, so that became a feature in Caynham Castle. This unique,
freestanding, round chapel features in several stories in the Christmas at
Caynham Castle anthology. I had to draw a map of just the chapel because…well
there’s a ringing room, with bells. And gargoyles. Shades of Hunchback of Notre Dame, right? Had to
draw that.
Nancy:
The first two pictures below are the great hall of Ludlow. Note the stones
jutting from the walls’ upper edges. Supports like that are common for a
hammerbeam ceiling. The third photo is of the hammerbeam ceiling in Westminster
Hall, site of medieval coronation banquets. I love the hall and its beautiful
roof. Thanks to Hollywood (looking at you, Adventures
of Robin Hood), I think we all expect a castle hall to be as big as the one
at Westminster, the fourth photo below. In reality, most are much smaller.
Jeanne:
I didn’t draw the ceiling, but drawing the hall has been super fun. Of course,
we adapted the Great Hall in the stories to be the Caynham Castle Hotel’s main
dining room. It has an amazing, ox-roaster-sized fireplace with dragons and
foliate (green man) heads on the mantel and side supports. Adding in the
necessary “modern” amenities for a restaurant in a 11th century
castle have been a fun challenge when it comes to the drawings, too!
Nancy:
The definitely un-modern structure in photos below is the great hall of
Middleham Castle (one with and one without Jeanne and me). The openings in the lefthand
wall lead to what was the solar next door. Each had half of that level of the
keep. See how much smaller it is than Westminster.
Jeanne:
Nancy had to explain to the rest of us that a solar was where, in medieval
times, the ladies would gather to sew because it had the best lighting.
Virtually every castle has one, so Caynham had to have one too. Ha! In Caynham
Castle Hotel, it’s an adjunct to the dining room and serves as sort of a
lounge. It also houses the gift shop and can be closed off or used as an extension
of the hall for special events, as it was in the Frost and Flame Ball for Christmas at Caynham Castle.
Nancy:
At Middleham, the kitchen is below the great hall. This photo was taken from
the kitchen, looking up at the platform that stands in for the floor of the
hall. That placement made sense to us, so we gave Caynham Castle a kitchen
below the great hall. We also added a terrace with parking underneath because
modern hotel kitchens get deliveries via truck, not horsedrawn wagons.
Jeanne: That also
gave us a chance to create hidden spaces beneath the castle – treasure rooms! –
and add a more “modern” solarium to Caynham Castle. Every castle may have had a
solar for the long-ago ladies, but not every castle has a Victorian glass-house
solarium. I’ve always loved the one at Asheville, NC’s, Biltmore House,
America’s Castle. So why not at Caynham too?
Nancy: As you
may’ve guessed, doing the maps meant Jeanne handled incorporating the features
people needed for their stories. When you’re putting characters in a common
space, it’s very important to have everyone visualize that space the same way
in their heads and on paper. The diagrams have been invaluable for that.
Jeanne: Of course
I took great delight in mapping all the fun stuff people came up with into the
castle as well. Secret rooms. Display rooms set up with set-piece displays a la
Downton Abbey. Statues by the Folly (Yes, there’s a Folly!). And don’t forget
the lucky gargoyles allllll over the castle! *Grins.* That said, Donna needed
the Folly. Anna needed the Ringing Room. Seressia needed a shop in town. And
everyone needed a room at the Castle!
Nancy: We also
created a town, Caynham-on-Ledwyche, to go with our castle. Ludlow is in the
part of England bordering Wales, which is known as the Welsh Marches. The area
is rich in history and legend, so we decided to site our town and castle there.
We adapted features common to towns with long histories, including a mix of
architectural styles spanning the centuries from half-timbered, thatched-roof
buildings to modern British groceries like Waitrose. Jeanne did the diagram for
the town, too.
Jeanne: Drawing
the town truly was a study in collaboration, I must say. We added businesses as
we needed them for our stories – a bookstore, pubs, tea rooms, a flower shop, a
curiousity shop, an old and quite haunted church and churchyard, a secondary hotel,
a brewery, some B&B’s. Each has its own history and some of them come with
a touch of magic in them!
Nancy: Everybody
contributed to the businesses, legends, castle features, and characters, and
each of us used bits created by others. The overlapping was a lot of fun, but
it makes for a very long copyright page!
Jeanne: Yes, but
who could resist that pub? When we created the Boar and Knight pub everyone
added a bit. Gail contributed photos of pubs she’d been in. Nancy and I used
the concept of the fireplace area from a pub we’d visited in Yorkshire. I don’t
remember who contributed the idea of the signboard listing the
owners/proprietors down through the centuries, but that’s there too. I wrote in
a happy macaw who welcomes people in.
Nancy: Here’s a
photo of the fireplace at the Rose & Crown in Bainbridge, Yorkshire. The inn
and its pub date back to the 15th century.
So that’s a little about the fun behind the scenes of
designing Caynham Castle.
What’s your favorite book, TV show, or movie set
in a castle? If you have any questions about the process of creating Caynham
Castle or the anthologies, we’d be happy to answer them. 
