Whoever said a home has to be a house? Why can’t it be a former fire station? Or a church? Or eco-friendly corrugated shipping containers made livable with plywood and plumbing? Or a castle out of a childhood fairy tale?
When we went looking for Palm Beach County’s quirkiest houses, we found eccentricity rendered in concrete, steel and wood.
Irish Castle, Wellington
Back in the 1980s, Bruce Woods decided the five acres of land he’d just purchased in rural Wellington needed a castle.
Now, after 28 years, it has one .
Woods’ version of Ireland’s 1184 LaHort Castle rises over the Rustic Ranches subdivision like a gray mirage. There are no misty moors surrounding Wood’s dream home, but it does have a kind of moat on one side, created from a drainage pond.
After a devastating car accident which forced him to halt construction for a few years, the carpenter-handyman-painter-artist is nearly finished with his hand-made dream. His last task is covering his castle with “stone” he carves from a mix of three different kinds of concrete, making his house not just a castle, but a fortress.