Coral Castle--The Bare Necessities

 In addition to the "kitchen" cooking area and the well to draw water from the earth below, Ed Leedskalnin also had a bathroom of sorts. From the coral rock, he fashioned a bathtub and coated the inside with cement so that it would hold water. He would fill it earlier in the day and let the Florida sun warm it up for a bath to enjoy later in the evening. 

Lots of people notice the small size of the bathtub but remember we are talking about a man who was no more than 5' and only about 120 pounds.

There was no toilet in the bathroom it was literally only a room for bathing. His necessary facility, an outhouse, was set up outside the castle. 

Next to the bathroom is the bedroom. There was a bed for his wife and himself and two beds for children along with a crib for a baby. Since Ed never married the bedroom would not be used. Ed himself had his own bed in his dwelling in the tower which I'll talk about later.

The tables I mentioned in my previous post mostly have stone chairs around them that at one time also rocked. He must have really liked the idea of rocking chairs. One table in particular is heart shaped and fits in with the legendary love story that surrounds Agnes, his sweet sixteen bride who abandoned him at the altar (or so the story goes). 

A large round slab of stone that looks like a table but has three different bumps in the top of it was Ed's sun couch. A firm believer that the Florida sun was going to cure his lung problems, tuberculosis or not, he spent time laying on this "couch" often. The three bumps were his pillows and positioned so that he could face the sun as it moved through the day. 

Last but not least, if his home is truly his castle, a man needs to have a throne room and be king of his castle. Ed had two thrones he made from stone. The larger one obviously for him and a smaller one for the woman who would be his wife. 

Let's see. Stone beds, an open air castle/home, primitive cooking utensils, and lest I forget, the repentance corner where an errant child would put his head through a hole in the wall while Ed could sit and lecture him for hours about his wrongdoings. Add to all that, another hole in the wall for the wife in the repentance corner and you can understand why he never married. Perhaps little Agnes had a foreshadowing of what life might be like with him. Run, Agnes, run.