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Irish Bayou Castle

Filed: About Town @ 8:07pm on September 12, 2007 One comment! :|

I had to go out to Slidell once again, and Charlie came along for the ride this time. The original plan was to see about going for a wander through Six Flags. More on that later, but since we were goofing off already, I asked if he’d mind a little detour.

Silly question. Charlie’s nearly always up for the long way around in the name of a little extra scenery.

I’ve driven by Irish Bayou on I-10 dozens of times and every time I went by I made a point to look for this odd white castle-house. From the highway, hundreds of feet away and on the other side of the Bayou, it was hard to tell just how far the fantasy had been taken.

It turns out they went all the way, and what a day we picked, the white of the building gleaming against the gorgeous blue sky:

We braved brambles and stickers to investigate, and just as we were about to leave, we noticed a few very odd things…as well as a wee old woman walking her blind dog. It was a complete fairy tale setup.

She lives next door, and said that the house was dreamed up by a contractor who took the “a man’s home is his castle” thing to heart. He planned and oversaw the project, but died before it was finished, having never spent a night in the house.

It was purchased before Katrina by a couple from South Carolina who intended to use it as a summer home. They too lost the house to the flood before they’d spent a night in the house, and it had been vacant ever since.

The front entryway has full chains as if for a drawbridge, there a turrets in the upper story, and pikes to keep out the invading hordes. When this man committed to an idea, he went all out.

Incidentally, the old woman lost everything in the storm and has been living in a trailer, but was hoping to get back into her house in the next few weeks. She’s lived there for 50 years and said the area had never once flooded previously. Her elderly black lab was diabetic, she explained matter of factly, and went blind during the hurricane, but, she said, “we get along fine, the two of us.” I aspire to be her when I grow up.

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One Response to “Irish Bayou Castle”

  1. Charlie Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

    Hey, babes you forgot the inexplicable, indeed somewhat spooky, fact that the air conditioner just visible in the lower window was running, even though the place was clearly vacant. We asked the old lady about it. She confessed she hadn’t noticed it before and could’t imagine who would have turned it on, since as far as she knows nobody’s been in there since Katrina. I suppose even ghosts like to keep cool, given the opportunity.

    Oh, and we should note that it wasn’t the photographer who was leaning; that’s the castle.