Loveland Castle

Loveland Castle

I had a really great time at the Loveland Castle. I learned a lot about Harry Andrews. He was the man who had the idea for and put the most work into Chateau Laroche. He and a group of friends wanted to become knights. They called themselves, the Knights Of the Golden Trail, or KOGT. Harry knew that if they were going to be knights, they needed a castle. It took Harry many years and a good chunk of his life to build just the first part of the castle. Then, when he was 80 years old, he felt like he needed a hobby, so he built a second part of the castle. The second part only took him 9 years to build. That’s amazing considering the numerous trips he had to take to get all of the stones for the castle. He would go down to the river banks and collect as many stones as he could in one wheelbarrow and bring them back to the castle. He used milk and orange juice cartons and poured cement into those to form the bricks. He had small windows put all over the front wall so that his men could shoot arrows from the inside.

The main objective was defending the front door. So the front door was built in 3 different layers and two main smaller doors called wiccett doors. It was also made of 238 different pieces of wood and 2,000 nails. It was impossible to cut through. The only way to get through it was to use a battering ram. If the enemy happened to get through the main front door, Harry and his men had to rush up the stairs. The stairs were interesting. One would be bigger or smaller than the next and they were very hard to climb without a handrail. Even if the enemy did get up the stairs, the KOGT had a long pole to knock them back down the stairs.

Harry Andrews was a genius. He had an IQ of 189, was fluent in 7 languages, had a photographic memory, and was smarter than the entire city of Dayton. The Great Flood demolished the city of Dayton, but Harry was smart. He had two flood walls built instead of just one to better protect his castle that was right alongside the Little Miami River.

So if they were Knights, who were they defending themselves against? Well, Harry was in a Boy Scouts Troop and two of his friends parents took up on a Cincinnati Enquirer offer. If you bought a full one year subscription, you got a plot of land down by the Little Miami River. Harry and his Scouts were there so much, that they decided to just leave their stuff there. Well, most of the time, when they returned, their gear would be gone or ruined. So Harry had the genius idea of building two giant stone tents so everyone’s stuff would be safe. The Knights of the Golden Trail in a way were defending their castle, but it wasn’t from other Knights, it was from thieves who wanted to steal their gear.