Chartwell Manor Basking Ridge 1971
Tucked below the Hills on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Liberty Corner section of Bernards Township, New Jersey, sits a turreted French Norman-style castle known to locals as Pharelock Castle. Very few locals remember the sad story about the Mayor’s brother who died before his vision was completed.
Phareloch Castle has its own road that still cuts through the Liberty Corner woods, in case the fire company needs to access it. Sadly, one night, the fire department didn’t make it.
Before the massive Hills development project of the 1960s that carved up the mountain, the property was one of the grandest in the area. It was a quiet dirt road. Bill Beatty named his estate Phareloch Castle (pronounced Fare-Lock). His mini-castle resided on 180 acres off Somerville Road at the foothills of the 2nd Watchung Mountain. There was no Allen Road.
The brothers Beatty, William (Bill) Henry, and Frank started building the castle in 1923. The vision was to contain 29 rooms, a slate roof, stained glass windows imported from France, homemade floor tiles from Finland and Portugal, a tower, a great hall, and winding staircases. It cost a whopping $120,000. Bill designed it to replicate his ancestor’s dwelling in England. What many don’t know, the brothers actually dismantled six barns on the property to use for beams in the castle.
In 1930, when the brothers started, Bill was a wealthy New York advertising executive, and Frank Beatty was the Mayor of Bernards Township. As history notes, he was a democrat to boot! In fact, the entire Township Committee was Democratic. We bring this up only to share that in a typically Republican district, Beatty was the last Democratic mayor in Bernards Township’s history (1933, 1934, 1939).
This was Bill’s dream house. So how sad was it when, in March 1931, while only 45, Bill became ill from a strep infection and died in the castle. His wife, Sarah Beatty, never remarried. She raised all four children in the castle and worked with Bill’s brother Frank over the next five years to complete Bill’s vision. Sarah lived there with her children until 1941. Frank lived on until Sept. 13, 1975, and died at the age of 81.
Dr. Michaeleen Maher, an amateur parapsychologist, investigated the possibility of a ghost sighting. The owner had told them that there definitely was a presence there. She said that it was friendly and a male. Carol suggested getting rid of him via a séance; however, Dr. Maher insisted that they leave him alone.
The new owner, Donald Burlingame, a longtime resident of Pluckemin, knew there was a spirit right from the beginning. They heard unexplained hammering noises echoing through the hallways and footsteps going up and down the stairs at night.
One night, they looked up and saw Bill (Beatty) on the balcony:
“It was a figure of a man standing there. It didn’t stay long for me to examine it very good. It was gone just like that. It was scary. It frightened the daylights out of me. I just never wanted to go on that balcony again. I passed by it, but to get me in there and to stand there…oh, forget it. I wouldn’t go in there,”
Donald Burlingame
Other incidents included bread flying off the table, and the vacuum cleaner mysteriously turned on and off. Pictures would “dance” on the walls, and there was even a séance with 12 people where the table actually lifted off the floor.
Robert Burlingame then sold the property to Robert Lumpkin for $40,000. On March 21, 1947, it was reported that Woodcastle School, located on Sanford Road, would open under the direction of Robert C. Lumpkin. Called an “Elementary boarding school for boys”, the castle was converted into a boys’ school known as The Woodcastle School for Boys. The school ran through the late 1950s.
During that time, students and teachers reported the sound of organ music echoing through the halls. Oddly, no pipe organ was present in the house. But Bill Beatty had previously owned one.
At the end of the late 1950s, Woodcastle School closed, and the castle was vacant. The property became a hub for mischief, youth vandalism, and police activity. Township Committee discussions ranged from tearing down the facility for redevelopment to establishing a private recreational club. We are still looking to find when the Woodcastle School officially closed. We know that Lumpkin finally sold the castle in 1959 to Joseph Bauernschmidt of Long Island, who owned the property for a short time before selling it to the Croft family. After Croft, Andrew Woehrel of Martinsville envisioned restoring the property to its original grandeur.
From 1970 to 1972, Andy Woehrel rented the Liberty Corner castle and estate to Terrence Michael and Judy Lynch, who founded the Chartwell Manor School, a 60-student co-educational school for children in grades 1-8. The estate was renamed “Utopia Castle”.
The school relocated in 1972 to the 42-acre estate of former NJ Governor Frank Murphy, known as Franklin Farms in nearby Mendham, New Jersey, where it ultimately led to its demise in the 1980s. Chartwell Manor’s headmaster, Terence M. Lynch, left the Somerset Hills School in Warren in the 1960s to start Chartwell Manor. He would in the 1980s be known not as a ghost, but as a real-life monster.
Accusations of child abuse started arising in the 1980s and ultimately led to convictions for the Lynches. He served jail time, was released, and later committed similar crimes. Yes, he was sent back to jail. Lynch spent seven years in state prison for abusing 12 boys and two girls between 10 and 16 years old (1981 to 1984). Lynch died on December 20, 2011, in Parsippany.
Sadly, on January 8, 1972, after Chartwell School vacated the property, two of Woehrel’s sons were staying at the castle overnight when a fire they lit in the fireplace got out of hand. With five mortgages and a personal financial collapse, the fire was most likely a saving grace for Woehrel.
The blaze destroyed the structure, leaving only its stones and bones. The only remaining parts of the estate were the kitchen, servants’ rooms, and the garage. On December 13, 1971, the castle came up at a Sheriff’s auction, and all you had to do was satisfy the $31,654 financing. The estate was expected to sell for around $100,000. In 1972, Donald Burlingame purchased the castle at a sheriff’s sale for a mere $43,300. Don and his wife, Carol, purchased the estate and began remodeling it. After a terrible battle with Bernards Township regarding rights to sell antiques out of the estate, the Burlingames were forced to sell the castle.
The latest owners, Steven Feldstein and his wife, Avis Gardell, spoke fondly of the castle and the work they have put into it. In 1998, Feldstein was living in Manhattan when he needed to find a new place to live. While reading The Wall Street Journal, he saw a real estate ad for a castle. They have spent 20 years restoring the estate. It’s still a work in progress.
In 2018, the 8.45-acre, farm-assessed property at what is now known as 1 Shadowbrook Lane in The Hills development was listed for sale for $2.75 million.
The ghost stories were twice featured on national television programs; first on ABC’s “That’s Incredible!” in 1981 and then on NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1992.
