Rock Diamond Sea Castle

With this model I wanted to present a castle you would not just love to put on a shelf and look at it a thousand times but above all: to play with it and add it to your Lego world. Therefore it has many details inside and outside and looks different and interesting from all angles. This sea rock castle with a couple of mechanic functionalities inside is my suggestion for places „on“ the sea so that all the great Lego ships have new destinations to discover. 

To make sure it is fun to build and then never gets boring to play with, Rock Diamond castle features a drawbridge with two metal chains to pull it up, decorative architecture with lots of details, fully decorated interiors with two fireplaces and a medieval style toilet, an inner ward with a well and a garden. 

A smaller rock island with a jetty and a small staircase built into the rock is your access to the castle ... and yet there is more than meets the eye! Beneath the castle, inside the rock, is another building … and a crystal mine. The old well connects the two parts. Let the magic start!

I hope you like my colourful and full of fantasy version of a castle!

More photos are on my Instagram channel. Visit me and say hello 👋 

Lego is so much more fun when you can crank and move something! 🤩

Two crank mechanisms are built in here: one to move a crystal box up inside the well and one for the pull-up of the drawbridge. 

The rock castle opens sideways so you can play in it more easily or present it on your shelf in a different way. If you keep the castle closed, it is beautiful to look at from all sides – for me this was an important factor when building it: that you can discover something from every perspective.

The mechanism works manually: When you turn the gear, the chains will furl and pull the bridge up. As I cannot show this easily in the 3D software, I took pictures of my prototype. On my Instagram channel I will show some videos. 

The castle has a spacious inner ward with a veggie garden that the inhabitants enjoy to take care of. At least they can choose their favourite veggies to grow here!

In the inner ward there is an old well … but, well, there is no water in it … instead it‘s crystals and diamonds! The reason why this is, is a …

… hidden home inside the rock 🌈

The rock foundations of the castle are not solid: The rock actually has another building inside the castle. Two funny dwarfs have secretly built their home inside the rock, hidden from the waves. It has a large kitchen and a bedroom area. On the west side there is a hidden door to their home. On the west side the dwarfs keep a special fishing chest to collect lobsters.

On the east side you can discover the chimney of their stove once they start cooking their preferred meal and you can smell the delicious aroma: Fish stew!

The two dwarfs spend their time carving deeper into the rock and thus they have their own …

… Crystals & Diamonds Mine ⚒

Rock by rock they get closer to find more diamonds and crystals. (Actually, several 1x1 bricks have to be carved out in order to find more gems.) They use various tools to do the job and once they have found a new crystal or diamond, they load it into the elevator box and pull it up. 

The mechanism is crank that moves up the box full of treasures inside the well. 

… hides parts of the elevator‘s construction and deviates potential thieves from coming closer and steal the treasures! But too late … two shipwrecked pirates are already on the lookout for some nice loot.

On the top floor is a small kitchen with an open fireplace and stove where you can grill a fish to perfection over the big flames. To air the kitchen there are two windows and a small balcony to the west side. 

On the middle floor there is a beautiful bedroom with an enchanting chandelier above the bed. A small cabinet is partially built into the wall and some stairs lead to a side room …

… that is the castle‘s restroom: Very modern for its time the old latrina has even toilet paper and does not need extra water to flush. 

Descending towards the big wooden entrance door you will pass a grand hall - a place for seeing your friends and have a dance! Beneath the paved floor there is the larder where all the good food is stored. 

With this set I wanted to add some small boat to make use of the jetty. And finally I decided to make a funny raft built from barrels. Some barrels have lost the top and the water floods in … (the blue part on one end) You must be talented to stand on a raft made of barrels! Our two shipwrecked pirates are awesome at this! The pirate man actually was the ship‘s cook and so he took his soup ladle along on the rescue.

Inside the small rock island there is another hidden space … shhhhh don’t tell anyone!

The restroom is another exciting technical detail I discovered when visiting castle museums around Germany: A thousand years ago toilets - latrinas - were built on the outside of the castle walls with an unsecured hole so that you were basically sitting over drop height of 80 metres (260 feet). I couldn’t resist to add it to the Rock Diamond castle. 😅