The Madame Sherri Castle in Chesterfield, NH

The Madame Antoinette Sherri Castle was once the proud summer home of a once prominent costume designer from New York City.  Her summer home, nestled in the south-west corner of the Monadnock region, was reputedly home to wild parties with Madame's New York friends and connections.  Built on a hilltop, the house had a first floor of fieldstone walls with a second story balcony that projected from a gabled roof second floor.  The exaggeration of the modest sized house, which was lost to fire in the 1960s, as a "castle" may very well be due to the surviving fieldstone elements of the house including a magnificent three arched exterior stair (pictured above & below) that connected the second-floor balcony to the house's grounds below.  This feature, probably the building's most prominent and grand architectural detail, is current threatened by the unchecked failure of the two larger arches that show large gaping fault lines in the stonework.  The property is owned by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.