One hundred and fourteen years ago, a man named Bancroft was looking to retire from the bustle of a career in the military and public service. He bought land in Groton, Massachusetts, and set about building his retirement home. The reasons he chose to build a bungalow with a European-style castle tower on the crest of Gibbet Hill have, like most past figures’ reasons, been made hazy by time. Was it as a gift for his wife? Did he do it to satisfy his own sense of Romanticism? Either way, he ran out of money and never fully completed the job.
In 1918, he sold the property to a prominent citizen named Ayers, who converted it into a sanitarium for sufferers of tuberculosis, the vengeful “White Death” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The fresh air and beautiful views served as a welcome respite for the victims of a disease that slowly drowns its prey in their own lung fluid. But with the introduction of an effective tuberculosis vaccine in the late 1920s, sanitaria were no longer needed, and a local hunting club took up the castle and bungalow, renting it out for social events. A firecracker accident destroyed the house and much of the tower in 1932, and the structure has remained abandoned ever since. (It is now protected by a private landowner who “vows to prevent any future residential development” on the property (“Gibbet Hill Historic Timeline,” 3).
I walked the town trail to Bancroft Castle yesterday morning on a whim. Even though I haven’t been up there in two years, little has changed. It seems out of step, just a bit, with the world in which we live. It’s a dreamer’s playground—and a dreamer’s warning.
This place bears witness to the impermanence of dreams. I like to imagine that Bancroft did indeed build the structure as a gift for his wife. In my mind, he was carried away by whimsy and left reality behind until it crashed through his fantasy. I relate to that journey.
This place also bears witness to the folly of human certainty. We think we know what we will do today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, too. And then a virus changes everything. And then a fire comes. And then, and then, and then.
Such were my somber thoughts as I walked the ruins and made for the trail that takes hikers along the crest of the hill.
And then, Beauty surprised me. She showed me the mockingbird that hopped along the trail ten feet in front of me, posing so I could admire him properly. She lifted my spirits with the gentle winds that wafted up the hill. She shushed me so I could hear the buzzing of the grasshoppers and bees as they went about their morning’s work. She gave me a respite.
And then, as I descended the ridge back towards Bancroft Castle, I saw it with new eyes. It is a bird sanctuary. A honeybee paradise. A squirrel haven. A safe home for small creatures.
Dreams are not forever. Dreams sometimes die, like Bancroft’s did. But that death is not the end. Here, in the land of housing developments and McMansions, a piece of a foolish dream lives on. Teenagers, brimming with life, come here with their friends. Fiancées, giddy with joy, come here with their photographers. Dogs, overflowing with love, come here with their human families. And I, breathing with relief, come here and remember that the death of some dreams can make fertile ground for new Beauty to grow.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Emily Dickinson
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