But Ralph’s death sent Josephine over the edge, and she was committed to a sanitarium, where she died a short time later. Ralph left a near $40 million dollar fortune to Josephine and their daughter, Muriel. Related: 7 Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Castles Construction on Dundas Castle was not completed until 1924, three years after Ralph’s death. And while other rumors have Josephine being locked away in one of the castle’s rooms to wallow in her own psychosis, neither she nor Ralph ever truly lived on the property for any length of time. Her instability was rumored to have been triggered by the death of their son, who fell from a window of their home years earlier. With its thick walls leaded glass windows, and mounds of stone and mortar, Dundas’ new domain buried the original lodge.ĭundas’ wife Josephine was known to be mentally ill. Rather than destroy the lodge, Dundas literally built his castle around it and on top of it.

To solidify his grand delusion, Dundas purchased Beaverkill Lodge to convert it into a Scottish-style stone castle. In addition to being a husband and a father, he wanted to be a Scottish Laird. Bradford Gilbert sold the lodge to a businessman named Morris Sternbach in 1903 four years later, Sternbach turned around and sold it to a man named Ralph Wurts-Dundas.ĭundas was an extremely wealthy, reclusive, and somewhat odd man. Gilbert’s wife, a native of Ireland, named the land upon which lodge was built “Craigie-Clair” (which translates to “Beautiful Mountainside”), after an Irish fishing village.īut the Gilberts’ stay would be short-lived.

Improvements followed, until the place was finally named the Beaverkill Lodge. All parties were amenable-and soon a piece of the property was secured on the banks of the Beaverkill River.Ī few years after construction was over, Gilbert moved his wife into the cabin. Gilbert proposed using a portion of Cammer’s land as the site of a log cabin. As a fisherman, Cammer knew the importance of lodging he offered room and board to his fellow fishermen who passed through town with their rods and reels.Īmong the regular visitors was an architect named Bradford Lee Gilbert, whose claim to fame was designing Atlanta’s flatiron building. In the mid-1880s, farmer named Joseph Cammer owned a small section of land in the Catskill Mountains. Designed to look like a remnant from the battle-worn pages of Scottish history, the structure began as a much simpler idea–by most accounts. Dundas Castle is an abandoned piece of architectural brilliance in the sleepy town of Roscoe, New York.

Abandoned castle layouts