The House Plans

The Lancer House Plans

This page is about the layout of the Lancer hacienda. I have done some drawings and created maps for reference for myself and other fanfic writers. All of this information I am sharing is for the entertainment of the Lancer fans.

I worked from various old maps to develop a possible version of the Lancer environs. I tend to favor its location further south, but this map places the Lancer spread to the east of San Jose. Some of the towns are real, some fictional. The dotted lines are railway tracks.

The house is located in the SE corner of the ranch, closest to Morro Coyo. There was a place named Fern Falls on the map of Lancer hanging in the great room. That could be the waterfall and pool where Johnny was wounded in BMB.

This is one of the maps I drew for when I write fanfic. I like to visualize where the characters are going. You can click on the map to enlarge it.

Color photo credits: AS

In my vision, the vaqueros and other workers lived on the Lancer ranch, probably beyond the arched gateway, near the main road. This is a sketch I did of the workers' houses, which would be owned and maintained by the ranch owne, Murdoch Lancer. The bunkhouse was for unmarried men. A typical cluster of small dwellings had a communal well in the center and some fencing around to keep their own small farm animals penned in.

Another view of the real hacienda, owned by the Oppenheimers at the time the show was filmed, and seen in long shots in the show. The tower was never used in the show, though it would have been a great spot for a fight scene or a nice place for the Lancer brothers to get away from it all. . .maybe just a quiet place for them to have a brotherly talk.

	Click on this picture to see a larger version with explanation of the house design. The small pictures are all from the High Riders, the pilot and were filmed in the real house.

This is my painting showing how I think the Lancer hacienda looks. The front of the set is never shown in its entirety in the show. Starting from the left, note the second floor bedroom Johnny occupied in BMB. He looked out the window to see the courtyard below and the doctor and Maddie driving away.

Moving to the right you see the 'Buscaderos' courtyard, where Scott was shot at by a Gatling gun. Jelly and even Scott resided in the lower bedrooms at times, as did many of their guests. The front door and arched French doors are seen at the right. Kitchen and storage would be located behind the great room.

AN EARLY FLOOR PLAN

The floor plans I have recreated of the Lancer hacienda are, of course, all guesswork. Throughout the show many of the rooms on the set were used for more than one shot or episode. Sometimes a room appeared to be on the second floor, then in the next episode it was on the ground floor, across the courtyard. The movement of the rooms and also some of the furniture and paintings has been described as being 'fluid'.

This is my early version of the ground floor. Bedrooms would be above. Numbers 22 and 23 are ground floor guest rooms off the courtyard that Jelly also used. Numbers 1 and 2 were used as bedrooms ( top of picture). In Lifeline Jelly slept in one of these when he thought he was dying.

Originally they filmed in the real house, so in the pilot episode you can see the dining room through a door at the end of the great room - but was later turned into a hallway. I later realized that dininng room juts out of the house and is located where I have drawn a vegetable garden. The set's hallway is seen in The Wedding, Glory and of course in CAWH, from where Scott staggered in.

Number 12 is a small room that was never really used, but it led the way to the kitchen. There was an octagonal green leather-covered table in there that might be used for playing cards. In this small picture from The Kid, they pulled it out of the small room, which was perhaps a butler's pantry or card room.

The front foyer was visible in more than one episode, and there was a large piece of art facing you as you entered. When seen from the great room, the foyer has a large painting on the far wall. In The Prodigal, when Murdoch lets the soldiers in the front door, they walk past him to the rear bedroom on the ground floor, so the main hall must go past the main staircase, though it is never seen.

The kitchen had a long farmer's table, a central tiled hearth with a spit (seen in Buscaderos) and an arch-top oven with an iron door typical of those used for baking bread. There is a back stairway just outside the kitchen that leads to the second floor and a wine cellar below.


AN RECENT FLOOR PLAN I studied the Lancer house layout as well as the plans of the original Moore house and came up with house plans that I feel are as accurate as I can make them, considering all of the inconsistencies in the filmed Lancer world. You may view larger version of the Plan 1: the ground floor, front yard, barn and outbuildings. Plan 2 is a closeup of the ground floor. These plans, along with maps and articles, will be available on a disk for Lancer fans at some point. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

In this composite picture, Scott walks out the front door of the hacienda and heads for the buggy.The bunkhouse, pretty close to the house, is seen to the right. Click on the picture to enlarge.

Yes, you're seeing two Johnnys in this combo shot. Click on this to view the enlargement. This set closely resembles the original house, right down to the pheasants up on the top of the bookcase, the overstuffed couches and the paneling on either side of the fireplace. And, of course, the chairs were copied. The doorway, back to the left, leads through that little room to the kitchen. Extreme right, just past the map on the wall, you can barely see the edge of the doorway Scott came through in Chase a Wild Horse - originally the dining room in the real hacienda. Email me with any questions:)

For more about the house, see Articles : Hacienda