page_title: Conisbrough Castle
section_title: 16th – 19th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Conisbrough Castle / History / 16th – 19th centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: Conisbrough Castle, 1785
context_page_description: Conisbrough Castle is a medieval fortification in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, England. The castle was initially built in the 11th century by William de Warenne, the Earl of Surrey, after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Hamelin Plantagenet, the illegitimate, parvenu son of Henry II, acquired the property by marriage in the late 12th century. Hamelin and his son William rebuilt the castle in stone, including its prominent 28-metre-high keep. The castle remained in the family line into the 14th century, despite being seized several times by the Crown. The fortification was then given to Edmund of Langley, passing back into royal ownership in 1461.
  Conisbrough Castle fell into ruin, its outer wall badly affected by subsidence, and was given to the Carey family in the 16th century. Its derelict state prevented it from involvement in the English Civil War of the 17th century and the remains were bought by the Duke of Leeds in 1737. Sir Walter Scott used the location for his 1819 novel Ivanhoe and by the end of the 19th century the ruins had become a tourist attraction, despite the increasing industrial character of the area.
context_section_description: By the 16th century Conisbrough Castle was in a poor state of repair, and a royal survey carried out in 1537 and 1538 showed that the gates, bridge and parts of the walls had collapsed in a spectacular land slippage, and that one floor of the keep had also fallen in. The collapse of the walls was a consequence of the instability of the topsoil on top of the limestone spur, which was a mixture of clay and sandstone; once the clay was washed away over time, the remaining sandstone proved extremely unstable and liable to crack.
  Henry VIII gave the ruins to the Carey family, who retained it until it passed by marriage into first the Heviningham and then the Coke families. The castle was not involved in the events of the English Civil War in the 17th century, and escaped the slighting that affected many similar properties, probably because the collapse of the outer walls had already made it indefensible and of little military value. In 1737, after the death of Edward Coke, the castle and the surrounding manor were bought by Thomas Osborne, the Duke of Leeds, for £22,500.
  In 1811 the novelist Sir Walter Scott passed by the castle and later used it as the location for his novel Ivanhoe, published in 1819. Scott only had a partial view of the property from the road and the events portrayed in the novel, set at the end of the 12th century, are fictitious; Scott believed the castle to have been Saxon in origin, a view shared by many 19th-century commentators. Although the writer John Wainwright was still able to praise the "picturesque view" around the castle in 1826, the antiquarian Ecroyd Smith commented with concern in 1887 on the changing character of the location, in particular the factories that were growing up around the new railway line and the "murky atmosphere" the industrial works created.
  In 1859 Francis D'Arcy-Osborne, the Duke of Leeds, died, leaving Conisbrough to his nephew, Sackville Lane-Fox, the Baron Conyers. The keep remained in good condition, but by 1884 it was apparent that repairs were needed and the antiquarian George Clark recommended urgent work to repair the stonework. If finances allowed it, he also urged the reinstallation of a roof and wooden floors. Limited repairs were subsequently approved by the trustees of Lord Conyers, although Clark's colleague, A. Ellis, expressed concerns that railings to protect the visitors who routinely climbed to the top of the keep had not been funded. A reported £500 was spent by the trustees renovating the castle ruins, including the construction of a lodge in the outer bailey for the castle keeper, completed in 1885, and improvements to the footpaths.
caption: Engraving of the castle in 1785
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