Marshall couple's home is their castle
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The musicians' gallery in the great hall of Cara and Char Branstetter's castle home in Marshall. -
Hand painted murals on the walls of the great hall in Cara and Char Branstetter's castle home in Marshall. -
One of Cara McCandless' favorite spaces in her house is the roof. -
Cara McCandless and Barton Branstetter's castle-home in Marshall.
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Cara McCandless and Barton Branstetter have never forgotten their storybook wedding trip to Thornbury Castle Hotel in South Gloucestershire, England. King Henry VIII spent 10 days in 1535 in this grand country fortress with his beloved Anne Boleyn.
Yet it's what they did 12 years after their 1994 wedding that really makes for a great story.
After finding a 3-acre lot in a quiet Marshall subdivision, they asked architect Alan Dunn to design them a castle of their own.
Modeled after Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, the 7,000-square-foot house is about as medieval as you can get in modern times, with battlements and turrets, arrow slit windows and even a drawbridge that leads visitors across a dry moat to the front door. It's certainly the most unique stop on Sunday's annual Wesley Spectrum Tour of Homes in the North and South Hills.
The feudal feel continues inside. The Great Hall is so great that the couple can fit more than 100 fellow members from the Society for Creative Anachronism inside with nary a worry of anyone stepping on another's costumed toes or the hem of her hand-stitched gown.
"It was important everything be period," says Ms. McCandless, a pediatric and adolescent psychiatrist. Her husband is a radiologist with UPMC Presbyterian Radiology Associates. They have three children.
As the couple began the four-year construction process, their guiding principle was historical accuracy. They sent Mr. Dunn to England and worked closely with general contractor Jim Horan to get the details right. Had they scaled the cast-stone house down to suburban sensibilities, Ms. McCandless explains, the proportions would have been all wrong, and the end result would have looked like something you put on a miniature golf course.
That also explains why the castle was built at the bottom of a hill instead of just a few yards from the street, like all the other neighboring mini-mansion Colonials. Remember, medieval castles were built for defense. So in addition to narrow, vertical windows from which inhabitants could shoot arrows and "murder holes" through which they dumped boiling water or rocks on attackers' heads, there's almost no landscaping. Other than the trees that shield it from the street, there is no real landscaping. Trees and vines close to the fort would provide something for invaders to climb on.
First Published October 9, 2010 12:00 am
