In 1885, Maryland businessman Colonel Samuel Taylor Suit began building the elaborate summer cottage now known as Berkeley Castle on land that had been part of Fruit Hill Farm, owned before the Civil War by John Strother of the Berkeley Springs Hotel. Built of local sandstone, with stone parapets and a three-story turret, it was one of more than two dozen splendid structures in the fashionable cottage community of Berkeley Springs during its Victorian Golden Age. Suit had married Rosa Pelham, daughter of an Alabama congressman and 30 years younger than he, two years earlier and began the castle for her. In August 1887, he and Rosa moved in with their three young children, but a year later Suit died after a brief illness. Rosa spent the next decade hosting elaborate parties, using the castle's great hall, matching fireplaces, majestic stairway, and wood-paneled formal dining room. In 1893, she added a tower-shaped carriage house connected to the main structure by winding tunnels blasted through the natural rock of the mountainside. When WV9 was built in the 1920s, cutting the tower off from the main structure, the tunnel under the road collapsed. After Rosa left, the castle passed through decades of varied uses, including a tea room, an artist retreat, and the site of the Monte Vista Boys Camp. It became a major tourism attraction for nearly half a century after Walter Bird bought it in 1954 and began offering house tours while telling colorful stories about its past. It was eventually placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Rumors that it is haunted have persisted, as has the false legend that it is a half-scale replica of the famous Berkeley Castle near Bath, England; in fact, it is about one-tenth the size of that castle and is not a replica. Today, Berkeley Castle is a private home open to the public for weddings and special community events.
