CONISBOROUGH CASTLE.
CONISBOROUGH, or, as it was anciently and more correctly called, Coningsborough or Coningsburh Castle, is one of the most remarkable of the strongholds in the North of England, standing high above the bank of “the gentle Don,” about half-a-mile below its reception of the Dearne, in the midst of a grand sylvan amphitheatre. Its name declares it to have been a seat, and its position to have been a fitting seat, of Saxon royalty; and the mighty earthworks which constitute its most ancient defences, proclaim the value of the possession and the power of the founder: moreover, the great enchanter of romance has thrown a charm over the scene and invested it with an interest not the less deep that it is wholly fictitious. Those, and they are many, who ascend the guarded mount, care little for the great Norman Earl who raised its tower; to them it is peopled with the creations of Scott. The chamber remains, though roofless, in which he places the funeral banquet of Athelstan, and the oratory is still unaltered within which Rowena poured forth her very mingled devotions. The present view must necessarily be of a more prosaic character. It must take notice of the great earls whose tower stands almost unrivalled as an abiding evidence of their feudal magnificence and constructive skill. Although Conisborough may not be compared to Coucy in dimensions, and the power even of the House of Warren pales before that of its more than royal Sires, the lesser but older tower is not inferior to its great rival in position, excellence of material, or delicacy of workmanship.
A·S·Ellis
Sept. 81.
CONISBOROUGH CASTLE.
GENERAL PLAN of the CASTLE & EARTHWORKS.
He who selected the hill of Conisborough as the site of a stronghold, if not, as King James said on visiting a similar position, a thief in his heart, must have thought security of the first importance, and have been prepared to expend a vast amount of human labour in obtaining it. What he had to deal with was an isolated knoll of rock and gravel, rising at about 400 yards from the bank of the river to a height of about 175 feet, naturally steep on every side, though rather less so to the south-west, where the exterior ground is somewhat higher. On this side, distant about a furlong, stands the ancient church of St. Peter, and about it the village of Conisborough. The top of the knoll has been levelled and trimmed into a platform of a rounded outline, 90 yards north-east and south-west, by 60 yards in the cross direction, thus enclosing about three-quarters of an acre. From this summit the slopes have been scarped steeply down to the bottom of an immense ditch about 60 feet below the crest. The outer slope or counterscarp of the ditch varies in height, or rather depth, according to the character of the ground, and for about two-thirds of its circumference is crested by a steep bank, which gives the ditch a depth of from 18 to 25 feet, and the exterior slope of which dies away into the natural fall of the hill-side. Towards the south-west, or town side, where the ground occupied by the church is about 25 feet higher than the terre-plein of the castle, the intervening hollow is occupied by a large outwork, resting upon the main ditch, a branch from which embraces and separates it from the town, and thus is formed an outer ward, convenient either for the lodgment of troops or the secure pasture of cattle. The principal approach must always have been on this side and across this earthwork. At no other point could so safe or so convenient an approach have been contrived; scarcely, indeed, one practicable for a horse with a rider on his back, still less for a litter or a vehicle on wheels. Such, as regards the earthwork, was, and still is the original fortress, the seat and stronghold of the king from whose office the borough was named, and, supposing the walls and keep to be removed, and the crest of the platform, the counterscarp of the ditch, and the outer edge of the earthwork to be palisaded, the place would still be one of great strength and equal to the accommodation of even a royal following.
When Earl Warren, soon after the Norman Conquest, visited his newly-acquired lordship, he must have been struck with the general analogy of its chief seat to the strong places he had left behind him. The mound or motte, here natural, the circular ditch around it, and the entrenched outworks covering the weaker side, resting upon the ditch and protected by a branch of it, were features as well known in Normandy as in England. No doubt he intended to add to the fortress those works in masonry that were just then become popular upon the Seine and the Orne; but the internal evidence of the oldest remaining work in stone, the encircling wall, shows it not to have been his work. Probably he found the works required at Lewes, Ryegate, and Castle-acre, quite enough to occupy his means, and was obliged to be content with such defences as he found already to his hand, and to his son or grandson is to be attributed the earliest extant masonry, the older part of the curtain, and a part of the outer gatehouse at the foot of the hill. There is no reason to suppose that there ever was a Norman keep. Probably the whole inner ward, as at Exeter and Restormel, was regarded as a shell keep. The present tower is certainly a rather later addition. The view here given shows the ascent from the gatehouse. On the left is seen the exterior of the curtain of the main ward.
The castle, as now seen, is composed of a keep, an inner and an outer ward, and the steep slope between them. The Outer Ward is the earthwork on the western side. There are no traces of the gateway by which this must have been entered, nor of any curtain wall surrounding it, or buildings within it. Probably its defences were always of timber placed upon the earthbank which crowns the scarp of the ditch and must have been thrown up out of it.