House Information
The manor's medieval design reflects Garriott's interest in the era. The house is adorned with various medieval items such as crossbows, swords, and armour. It features traps and a network of secret passages and rooms. A secret room in the basement contains some of Garriott's most treasured artifacts, including dinosaur fossils, a coffin with a human skeleton inside it, and an authentic 16th century vampire hunting kit. The house also features other collections such as hairs from the Glacier snowman, a brick from the Great Wall of China, a Russian spacesuit, and three stained glass windows retrieved from an abandoned church. There is a large collection of automatons. The basement room he refers to as the dungeon, has shrunken heads, mummified remains of parts of people as well as a mummified bird found in a tomb in Egypt, and human skulls.
The house also has an observatory in the main complex. Although part of the house, it is structurally independent from the rest of the house in order to damp out vibrations, as they ruin long-exposure space photos.
Britannia Manor was designed by designer/architect, Alan Barley, of Barley & Pfeiffer Architects in Austin, Texas. In 1996, Garriott hired Moore-Andersson Architects, Austin, to design another house on a nearby riverfront property. The property is situated atop a bluff overlooking the Austin, Texas skyline, the 360 Bridge, and Lake Austin. Britannia Manor Mark 3 will also have a rotating observatory and will be more castle than house. Construction on this house was delayed for some time after the dot com crash. It resumed for a while a few years later, but was put on indefinite hold when Garriott decided in 2008 to spend the majority of his fortune to go into space.
There is a working cannon at the front door and an indoor grotto with hot-and-cold-running rain showers.
As of late October 2011, Britannia Manor II is up for sale for US $4,100,000
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