Tucked near downtown Fairhope sits one of Baldwin County’s more unusual residences: a hand-built, ever-evolving castle that artist Dean Mosher has been shaping for roughly three decades. His wife, Pagan Mosher, grew up practically next door in a second, equally storybook home built by her father, the late artist Craig Sheldon.
Sheldon settled in Fairhope decades ago, drawn by the ability to live off the bounty of Mobile Bay, and built his family’s original castle out of local materials near Oak Street. As his family grew, he famously stacked bedrooms on top of one another to create a tower, giving his daughter a childhood spent watching longleaf pines sway from her tower window, at least until Hurricane Frederic toppled most of the trees years later.
Dean Mosher met the Sheldon family not long after arriving in Fairhope in the early 1970s, befriending Craig Sheldon for years before he ever met Pagan. The couple married 36 years ago in the yard of the original Sheldon castle, then bought a modest, nondescript cottage next door that Dean has been transforming into his own castle ever since.
Very little of that original cottage remains today, Dean says, apart from a hallway and a bathroom. Rather than tear it down and start fresh, he chose to build outward and upward by hand, piece by piece, over the years. The result is a whimsical, rambling structure, complete with a bridge, that regularly draws curious passersby who stop to admire it from the street.
The couple has leaned into the fairy-tale theme rather than shy away from it. Since 1980, the Sheldon family has hung a long, yellow braid from a tower window each year during the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival, a nod to Rapunzel. Every Friday, children walking to school as part of the Fairhope Walking School Bus program cross the Moshers’ bridge, convinced a troll lives underneath, prompting the couple to write the children letters signed by the troll himself.
Group tours of the castle are offered several times a year, and Dean’s website and the castle’s Facebook page invite visitors to walk the grounds and view the exterior on their own, though he asks that people call ahead for an inside look. The original Sheldon castle next door, once run as a bed-and-breakfast, is now home to Pagan’s sister and brother-in-law, along with Dean’s mother in a small apartment out back.
For Dean, the choice to build something so conspicuous came with an understanding of what it invites. As he’s fond of telling visitors, if you want to live like a hermit, the last thing you should do is build a castle.