Conisbrough Castle Conisbrough Castle is a 12th - century castle in Conisbrough , South Yorkshire , England , whose remains are dominated by the 97 - foot ( 29 . 5m ) high circular keep , which is supported by six buttress es . In the mid - 1990s , the keep was restored , with a wooden roof and two floors being rebuilt . Audio and visual displays now help to reconstruct a view of life in a medieval castle , while a history of the site is documented in the adjacent visitors ' centre . The building is considered one of South Yorkshire ' s primary tourist attractions , and sees in excess of 30 , 000 visitors per year . It is managed by English Heritage , as of 1 April 2008 . Doncaster Council own the land the monument is standing on , but English Heritage manages the property . History . The castle was probably built by Hamelin Plantagenet on the site of an earlier Norman castle . The Warenne family also owned Sandal Castle near Wakefield , Lewes Castle in Sussex , and Reigate Castle in Surrey , as well as a keep on their lands at Mortemer in Normandy . The Yorkshire lands ceded to The Crown on the death without issue of John de Warenne , 7th Earl of Surrey in 1347 . After Conisbrough reverted to the Crown , Edward III gave it to his youngest son Edmund Langley , and it was probably during his tenure that the work to improve the accommodation in the inner ward was carried out . Langley died in 1402 and the castle was inherited by his eldest son Edward , 2nd Duke of Albemarle . Albemarle ( by then Duke of York ) was slain at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 . His widow Maud resided in the castle until her death in 1446 when it passed to Richard , 3rd Duke of York who was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 . His son Edward , Earl of March continued the war emerging victorious and was crowned King Edward IV . Because Edward won the war the castle was not confiscated as would usually have happened when a magnate rebelled against the crown and lost . In this case the castle was inherited by Edward and became Crown property when he ascended to the throne . By the reign of Henry VIII the castle was in a dilapidated state . In the 1537 – 38 a survey by Royal Commissioners found that the castle was already a ruin : from the description in the survey , it seems that most of the damage seen today had already occurred . It is because it was a ruin by the 17th century ( the collapsed gatehouse and fallen parts of the curtain wall made the castle indefensible ) that no further damage was done to the fabric of the castle during the English Civil War , which caused so much damage to many old fortifications either through bombardment or slighting . Because of this , along with sympathetic ownership , the keep survived as a ruin , but largely intact , down to the 21st century . The name " Conisbrough " is derived from the Old English " Cyningesburh " - meaning ' the defended " burh " of the King ' , suggesting the area once belonged to one of the English kings , prior to the Norman Conquest . At the time of the Norman Conquest the manor of Conisbrough was held by King Harold - he was defeated at the Battle of Hastings . Earlier documents dated at c . 1000 – 1004 show that lands in this area known as Kyningesburg were granted by Wulfric , one of King Edward ' s ministers , to Elfhei , another Saxon nobleman . Conisbrough Castle in fiction . In Sir Walter Scott ' s novel , " Ivanhoe " , ' Coningsburgh Castle ' is based on Conisbrough . Scott ' s Coningsburgh is a Saxon fortress , based on the mistaken conclusion by him that its unique style marked its keep as a non - Norman . In the notes that accompany the novel , Scott acknowledges that the outer works were Norman but speculates that the keep — which he describes in some detail in the novel ( but which in the notes he says he only viewed hastily ) — was similar to Scottish mainland and island Broch s , in particular Broch of Mousa in the Shetlands , and hence in Scott ' s mind , if the castles of the Scottish islands were Scandinavian in origin , then so too could Conisbrough have been a pre - Norman castle built by Scandinavians or Saxons with knowledge of similar Scottish structures . A nineteenth - century romantic vista since shown not to be so .