What It's Like to Rent a Castle Near New York City

Most people assume renting a castle means a trip to Scotland or the Loire Valley. Fewer know there is a castle you can rent two hours from New York City, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and that it sleeps 44.

Hilltop Castle in Beach Lake has 18 bedrooms and 26 bathrooms. It is one of four buildings on Hilltop Castle World’s 130-acre hill, alongside the Mansion, the Farmhouse and the Lodge, which between them sleep 92. For a group of up to 44, the Castle on its own is the main event.

What it actually feels like

You come up the drive and there it is: a long pale stone wall with battlements, round corner towers and a crenellated gatehouse, and a timber drawbridge across to the front door. Inside are 30,000 square feet of rooms made for a large group.

The foyer is timber walls, barn doors and a tall ceiling, with room for everyone to arrive at once. Through the far doors is the courtyard, with three outdoor pools inside the walls and bedroom doors opening onto the deck. Below is the basement, which the floor plan calls the Dungeon, where the whole group can lose an afternoon:

• A 72-seat theater, with a curtained stage under the screen
• Two candlepin bowling lanes, with the arcade alongside
• A full-size indoor basketball court, lined for pickleball
• Indoor mini golf, air hockey, and a selfie stage lit for photographs

Back upstairs there are two billiard tables, a game room, a yoga room with exercise bikes, a toddler room, a living room long enough for sofas down both sides, and a 60-seat conference room with glass on three sides for groups that are working too.

The Legend of the Lost Kingdom

Then there is the part that makes it a castle in more than name. The Legend of the Lost Kingdom is a treasure hunt through twelve hidden rooms, built into the Castle itself. Your group sets off with a story, a smartphone and each other: puzzles to solve together, lost pages to find, and passages you would never have noticed on the way in.

It comes with the building, with nothing extra to book and nothing extra to pay. We won’t say more than that. As one guest put it after a family stay, “The kids loved exploring all of the secret passageways and hidden rooms.”

---

The bedrooms

All 18 bedrooms have their own private bathroom, which matters when 44 people are getting ready on the same morning. There are 26 beds: 2 kings, 16 queens and 8 twins, all high-end Beautyrest beds made up with hotel-quality linens before you arrive. Most are queen rooms; two bedrooms take two bunk beds each; and the two tower suites each have a king, a bathroom with a double vanity, and their own spiral stair from the main floor. The Castle tour shows every room on the floor plan, so you can work out who sleeps where before you arrive.

The kitchen and dining room

The kitchen and dining room are one room, with an island and a wall of refrigerators at one end: six refrigerators and two ovens in all, plus two grills. The dining room seats 48, so the whole group eats in a single sitting rather than in shifts. If nobody wants to cook, the caterers and the bartender on our services page come to the building, and you book them directly.

The grounds

The Castle sits on a private 130-acre hill with four miles of walking trails: an easy loop of a mile and a half and a moderate loop of two and a half miles, through woods and meadows. A booking of the Castle comes with the grounds around it, and the Castle has its own fire pit for the evenings. The rest of the hill and its trails are shared with whoever has booked the other buildings, unless your group takes all four.

The hill has neighbors, so music stays indoors at a reasonable volume.

Who rents Hilltop Castle

A wide range of groups: milestone birthdays (40th, 50th, 60th, 70th), family reunions, company off-sites, anniversaries, retirements and graduations with family. Teams from PepsiCo, Ford and Dow Jones have run their off-sites at Hilltop. If your group is larger than 44, the Castle can be booked together with the Mansion, the Farmhouse and the Lodge, each a short walk away. For more on how it all works, see Can you actually rent a castle for the weekend?

How to book

You book directly in our booking calendar, where you see the price and availability for your dates. Check-in is at 4:00 PM and check-out at 10:00 AM. The minimum stay is two nights at weekends outside summer; from June to Labor Day it is four nights at weekends and three midweek, and holiday weekends are longer. The primary renter must be 25 or older. For a group of friends, everyone in the group must be 25 or older; families are welcome with guests of any age.

The Castle is at 50 Castle Hill Rd, Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, two hours from New York City and Philadelphia by car. For questions first, call or text (570) 251-1998, write to hello@stayathilltop.com, or see the frequently asked questions.