Remnants of Popular New Hampshire Castle Just Partially Collapsed
There's a good chance that anytime we think of the words "collapse" and "New Hampshire" together in a sentence, we remember news about the Old Man of the Mountain crumbling down the mountainside in Franconia Notch 18 years ago. Unfortunately, there's another New Hampshire landmark that just suffered a partial collapse -- what was already left of it, anyway.
Madame Sherri's Castle
The history of Madame Sherri's Castle in West Chesterfield, New Hampshire is an eccentric one. According to the Chesterfield Historical Society, Madame Sherri became a New Hampshire resident back in 1929, following the death of her husband a few years before, when she purchased 600 acres of farmland and forest on Gulf Road in West Chesterfield.
When she decided to construct her castle on the grounds, she decided she didn't need blueprints and randomly just started shoving stakes into the ground on the property. The Chesterfield Historical Society said that the local craftsmen were excited to take the job on at first, but after basically "helicopter parenting" them and changing things on the fly, it was a bit annoying working for her.
The castle was eventually completed and stood three floors tall, with the third floor becoming Madame Sherri's private quarters but also the party house, where outrageous parties were said to be thrown -- so outrageous that Madame Sherri apparently appointed herself Queen of the Ball and even had a cobra-backed chair she referred to as her throne.
The private quarters/party house was accessible only be a set of outdoor stone stairs that ran up the side of the building, which is what just suffered the partial collapse. According to WMUR, a section of those very stairs crumbled to the ground within the last few days. The castle itself burned down on October 20, 1962, and is now cared for (the remaining land, anyway) by the New Hampshire Society for the Preservation of Forest.