Fire on the Hill: Kimball Castle Above Lake Winnipesaukee

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 13, 2026 · How we verify

On a hill above Lake Winnipesaukee in Gilford, New Hampshire, Kimball Castle stood for more than a century as a granite oddity: a medieval-style summer house built by a railroad director who could afford to import the materials he wanted from Europe. In the early morning of August 27, 2025, fire tore through it. The floors, ceilings and roof collapsed, the building was declared a complete loss, and demolition is considered likely. What remains is a ruin on private land, a 280-acre conservation area next door, and a set of ghost stories that were circulating long before the fire.

Kimball Castle at a Glance

• Where: a hill overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee, Gilford, New Hampshire
• Built: beginning in 1894, for Benjamin Ames Kimball
• Builders: Italian stonemasons, working in local granite with materials imported from Europe
• Cost: about $50,000
• Size: a 2 1/2-story castle on an original estate of 300 acres
• Listed: National Register of Historic Places, 1982
• Status: condemned as unsafe by the town of Gilford, then gutted by fire on August 27, 2025
• Access: the 20.1 acres holding the buildings are private and posted with No Trespassing signs

Benjamin Ames Kimball and the House He Only Used in Summer

Kimball was a director of railroad companies operating in the region, and the castle was never his year-round home. He began building it in 1894 and used it as a summer estate until his death in 1920, which happened not on the hill above the lake but at his house in Concord, New Hampshire.

The construction details are the part worth knowing. The stonework was done by Italian masons using granite quarried locally, and the finish materials were brought in from Europe. The total came to roughly $50,000, an enormous sum for a seasonal residence in the 1890s, and it bought a 2 1/2-story building in a deliberately medieval idiom set at the center of a 300-acre estate. The outbuildings were part of the plan, and they were listed along with the castle on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Charlotte Kimball’s Will and the Money That Went Missing

The slow collapse of the estate began with an act of generosity. Charlotte Kimball, Benjamin Kimball’s daughter-in-law and the last remaining heir, died in 1960. Her will donated the land to the Mary Mitchell Humane Foundation, an adjunct to the MSPCA-Angell, to be managed as a wildlife preserve and sanctuary.

That is not what happened. Over the following years the funds left to carry out Charlotte Kimball’s wishes went missing, and the foundation moved to sell the whole estate. The buildings emptied out, fell into disrepair, and became a target for extensive vandalism. A group of local residents led by Sandra McGonagle petitioned the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office of Charitable Trusts, an investigation into the missing money followed, and the resulting settlement put the Attorney General and the Belknap County Superior Court in the position of deciding what happened next. They ordered the town to take over as trustees of Charlotte Kimball’s estate and carry out the terms of her will.

Gilford assumed the trusteeship in 1981 and studied the problem. The master plan it produced recommended subdividing the land and selling the portion containing the castle to a private party for commercial development, with the proceeds used to replace the missing funds and fund the care of the rest. In 1990 the town and the Attorney General succeeded in having the noncommercial stipulation vacated, clearing the way for that sale. The town created the Kimball Conservation Committee to oversee the money and turned the remaining 280 acres into a conservation area with hiking trails. Proposals to convert the castle itself into a resort hotel have been made over the years, and none has been acted on.

The Ghost Stories Attached to the Castle

The haunting that attached itself to Kimball Castle is simple and, like most castle legends, centered on the man whose name is on the building. Visitors and paranormal enthusiasts have long described the ghost of Benjamin Kimball himself. The reports that circulate include:

• Mysterious lights seen in and around the building
• Unexplained figures appearing at the windows
• Furniture reported to move on its own

None of this is documented in the way the estate’s legal history is documented. There are no dated incidents, no named witnesses, and no verified event on the property that the stories point back to. It is also worth remembering the context in which the reputation grew: a large stone house standing abandoned for years, stripped of its caretakers, repeatedly broken into and vandalized, visible from the road and from the water. Lights in the windows of a building like that have a long list of ordinary explanations, and a structure the town eventually condemned as unsafe is going to make noise. That does not settle anything. It does mean the stories belong in the folklore column rather than the record.

Why You Cannot Tour Kimball Castle

This is the point most accounts get wrong. The 20.1-acre subdivided parcel on which the castle and its outbuildings stand is privately owned, is no longer part of the Charlotte Kimball trust, and is posted with No Trespassing signs. It is not open to the public, there are no tours, and the town condemned the building as unsafe well before the 2025 fire reduced it to a shell. Walking up to it is trespassing on a structure that has already had its floors and roof fall in.

What is open is the land around it. Much of the original estate remains conservation land managed by the town, and the Lockes Hill hiking trails are reached from a parking lot and trailhead on Route 11. That is the legitimate way to spend a morning here: 280 acres of trail above Lake Winnipesaukee, with the ruin of a railroad man’s summer castle somewhere off to the side, behind a line you do not cross.

Address: 59 Lockes Hill Road

See Kimball Castle for Yourself

Sources

• Historic Kimball Castle to be torn down after fire, officials say
• Historic castle in Gilford, N.H. likely coming down after fire, chief says
• NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
• GeoHack – Kimball Castle
• Wikipedia: Kimball Castle