PHOTOGRAPH BY WES BATTOCLETTE
The way the knights tell it, Harry D. Andrews was the stuff of legends. There’s the time he was declared dead during World War I, only to be declared undead six months later. And there is, of course, his most tangible claim to fame—the castle on the banks of the Little Miami River, built by hand using little more than river stones and cement.
When the schoolteacher and medievalist took over Sunday School at his local church in the early 1920s, a dozen 12-year-old boys under his care collectively proclaimed that America was on the downslide. And they wanted to fight back by reorganizing King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. “[But] they told Harry they didn’t think they were going to be real knights because they didn’t have a castle,” says Sir Dave, a member of the Knights of the Golden Trail. “Harry told them if they helped pull rock from the river he’d buy the property and build them a castle.”
Loveland Castle was Andrews’s life’s work, taking over 50 years to complete and drawing visitors of all stripes. Thirty years after Andrews’s passing, his loyal knights still stand watch.
See more photos of Loveland Castle in the gallery below, and take a video tour of the castle on our TikTok @cincinnatimagazine.
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