History of Conisbrough Castle
The magnificent keep at Conisbrough Castle is one of South Yorkshire’s most striking landmarks. The castle was the centre of a great Norman lordship, given by William the Conqueror to William de Warenne. The keep was probably built in the 1170s or 1180s. Escaping damage in the Civil War, it became a picturesque ruin in the 18th and 19th centuries, and inspired Sir Walter Scott's most famous novel, Ivanhoe, published in 1819.
Early History
‘Conisbrough’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Cyningesburh’, meaning ‘the king’s borough’. Little is known of the site before the Norman Conquest, but Conisbrough town was certainly important long before then: a major Anglian church, now the church of St Peter, stood here, probably as early as the 8th century, and is the oldest standing building in South Yorkshire.[1]
Conisbrough may have been a royal estate and minster of the Anglian kings of Northumbria: throughout the Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods, it seems to have been the most important place in South Yorkshire.[2]
In 1086 Domesday Book recorded that the estate included 28 townships, stretching east to the Lincolnshire border and south to Harthill, and so covering most of the south-east corner of the West Riding. Before the Norman Conquest the estates were in the hands of King Harold.[3]
Download a plan of Conisbrough CastleThe Warennes
After the Norman Conquest, the honour of Conisbrough was given to William de Warenne, who took his name from his ancestral estates in the valley of the Varenne in Normandy, south of Dieppe.[4] Warenne acquired land across 13 counties and was raised to the Earldom of Surrey.[5]
The main Warenne estates were centred on Conisbrough in Yorkshire, Castle Acre in Norfolk and Lewes in Sussex, the family's principal English seat.[6] Their castle at Conisbrough probably comprised an earthwork enclosure or ringwork crowned with a timber palisade and with timber buildings within it, on the site of the present inner bailey. There was probably also an outer bailey.
The Warennes gave the church at Conisbrough, with all its properties and dependencies, to the priory which they founded at Lewes, and it is the priory records that form the principal documentary source for Conisbrough in the 11th and 12th centuries.[7]
William was succeeded in 1088 by his son William (d.1138), 2nd Earl Warenne and Earl of Surrey. In 1121 this William was given the great manor of Wakefield in west Yorkshire, and established a secondary seat at Sandal Castle.[8] His son and successor, also William, was killed on crusade at Laodicea in Turkey in 1148.[9]
The Building of the Stone Castle
The 3rd Earl had only one child, a daughter, Isabel (d.1203). Her first marriage, to King Stephen’s youngest surviving son, William of Blois (who became the 4th Earl), was childless. On William's death in 1159, Henry II married Isabel – the greatest heiress in England – to his half-brother Hamelin (d.1202).[10]
Hamelin and Isabel visited Conisbrough regularly – probably annually, a pattern which may have been established by previous generations of the family.[11] It was almost certainly Hamelin who built the stone keep at Conisbrough, which has been dated on stylistic grounds to the 1170s or 1180s.[12] In 1189 Hamelin and Isabel established a chaplain at the castle.[13]
The curtain wall and the buildings which lined it – including the great hall, kitchen and a chamber block – are thought to have been built soon after the keep,[14] or possibly after Hamelin’s death by his son, William (d.1240).
In 1201 Hamelin’s nephew, later King John (r.1199–1216), stayed at Conisbrough,[15] and throughout that century and the next the castle remained one of the principal seats of the Warennes.
Read a description of Conisbrough CastleThe Last Earl Warenne
The 8th and last earl, John, married Joan of Bar, Edward I’s granddaughter. The marriage was unhappy and childless, and in 1313 Joan, living apart from her husband at Conisbrough, went to London to live under Edward II's protection.
Shortly afterwards, in 1317, Conisbrough became embroiled in Earl John’s political rivalry with Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who besieged and captured Conisbrough and seized John’s Yorkshire estates. But in 1322 Thomas rebelled against Edward II, and was defeated and executed. John’s estates were returned to him in 1326.[16]
When Earl John died without heirs in 1347, however, the Warennes’ northern estates, including Conisbrough, reverted again to the Crown, and were settled by Edward III on his fourth son, Edmund Langley (1341–1402), later Duke of York, who had been John de Warenne’s godson.[17]
The House of York
Edmund Langley and his descendants – the House of York – played a major role in the turbulent history of England in the later 14th and 15th centuries.
Langley’s main seat was at Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire, but Conisbrough was his secondary residence. As such, it was more often used by the House of York than it had been by the de Warennes. Major alterations carried out to the domestic buildings in the castle sometime in the 14th century may have been carried out under Langley rather than under the last Warenne earl.
On Langley’s death in 1402 the estates and dukedom were inherited by his elder son, Edward. To his younger son, Richard of Conisbrough, Earl of Cambridge, Edmund left nothing (possibly because Richard’s paternity was in doubt). Richard was born at Conisbrough Castle in 1385, and with no land of his own he lived on there as his brother’s tenant.[18]
The Southampton Plot
It was at Conisbrough that Richard and a number of other Yorkshire notables conspired to assassinate Henry V at Southampton on the eve of Henry’s departure for France in 1415. But the plot was discovered, and Richard was executed.[19]
His brother, Edward, died at the Battle of Agincourt less than three months later, leaving Conisbrough to be occupied by Richard’s widow, Maud, until her death in 1446.[20] This was probably the only period when the castle was the main residence of a great magnate.
Conisbrough and the Wars of the Roses
Richard of Conisbrough’s son, also Richard, by his first wife, Anne Mortimer, became the 3rd Duke of York and inherited Conisbrough, with many other estates.
When royal authority broke down in the 1450s under the incompetent regime of Henry VI, Richard became the leader of the Yorkist cause and claimant to the throne as the rivalry between Lancastrian and Yorkist factions culminated in open warfare.[21] In 1460 he was declared a traitor and his estates were seized, but Conisbrough was garrisoned for him.
Richard was subsequently defeated and killed at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460.[22] His head was stuck on a spike over Micklegate Bar in York, wearing a crown of paper and straw. But three months later his 18-year-old son Edward defeated the Lancastrian army at the Battle of Towton, and ascended the throne as Edward IV.
Abandonment and Ruin
Despite its royal status the castle seems to have been abandoned some time in the late 15th century. By 1538, when the castles of Conisbrough and Tickhill were surveyed for Henry VIII, the keep had lost its roof and floors, and the gatehouse and greater part of the south curtain wall had collapsed into the ditch.[23]
When the antiquary John Leland visited at about this time he
saw no notable thing but the Castle standing on a rock of stone and ditched. The walls of it hath been strong and full of towers.[24]
In 1559 the castle was given by Elizabeth I to her cousin Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. It passed by the end of the 17th century to the Coke family, to the Dukes of Leeds in 1737 and in 1839 to the Conyers family and Earls of Yarborough.[25]
Landscaping work was carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries, probably by the owners of the castle, to enhance its picturesque qualities,[26] and the castle certainly achieved some fame as a romantic ruin. It was depicted by numerous artists.
While at Doncaster on his way north Sir Walter Scott saw Conisbrough, which he thought to be an Anglo-Saxon ruin, and recreated it as Coningsburgh Castle in his celebrated novel Ivanhoe (1819).
Recent History
The castle was taken into state guardianship in 1950, and in the 1960s the Ministry of Works carried out extensive masonry repairs.[27] The castle was also the scene of important excavations in 1967–9 and 1973–7, and new stairs were built to the keep.[28]
During the 1990s the castle was managed by the Ivanhoe Trust, which re-roofed and floored the keep,[29] and built a starkly modern exhibition building in the outer bailey. In 2007 the castle reverted to direct management by English Heritage.
By Steven Brindle, Senior Properties Historian, English Heritage
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