Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)

by George Thomas Clark

SUGGESTED ORIGINAL APPEARANCE.

The height of the parapet is 6 feet 6 inches, and the pattern of the coping may be seen at the junction with the buttress turrets, and this also shows that the roof was confined to the inner circle, and did not project over the parapet. There are also traces showing that the embrasures contained, as at Alnwick, a hanging shutter.

The inner circle, or chamber within the inner walls, was 27 feet diameter, and its flooring rested upon a range of nineteen plain corbels. Only the lower part of the wall of this chamber remains, but the jambs of a doorway show that it was entered from the rampart walk. The wall, and consequently the chamber, was about 7 feet high, and upon it was a conical covering, the eaves of which must have projected somewhat over, and discharged their water into the rampart walk. This mode of finishing off the summit of a tower, by placing the uppermost floor within the circuit of the rampart walk and leaving the battlements free from the roof, is seen in its greatest completeness at Coucy, and what is there seen illustrates what must have been the arrangement here, at Pembroke, at Martens Tower, Chepstow, and in the smaller and later flanking towers of Holyrood House. It is obvious that unless the roof sprung here from a wall within the parapets, or unless there was a timber gallery carried round outside the wall, such a tower as this could not be defended. Its loops were intended for light and air, not for defence; this could only have been directed from the battlements. Hence the absurdity of covering in towers intended for defence, or at any rate to have the appearance of being defensible, with conical roofs springing from the outer wall.

Of course the accommodations of such a tower as this of Conisborough were not such as to suit its lords, still less their ladies, save under the pressure or in expectation of a siege, a remark which applies to all, save the largest, keeps. The passive strength of Conisborough, and its rocky base, secured it against attacks even if seconded by engineering machinery. No catapult or battering-ram would be at all likely to shake or break it. The peril to be guarded against was a blockade, and with this view there was a well within the tower, and the two lower floors, it is clear, were intended for the storage of provisions. The first floor would be the ordinary room of the constable, or lord, and of his family or guests; the men, probably, also sleeping there. The room above would be the ladies’ room, with the oratory close at hand. The kitchen was above all, and there, also, at the battlement level, would be the lodging of the small garrison, probably of not more than ten or a dozen picked men, with a ready communication with the ramparts.

The fashion of round keep towers, quite different from the shell keeps, came in towards the close of the Norman and during the Early English period of architecture, when frequent communication with the East had affected men’s military ideas. A few, such as Brunless, Tretower, Launceston, and Orford, are found in England of that time, but in France there are many, widely spread, and very grand examples. Philip Augustus was a great builder of such towers. That of the Louvre, of which the circular foundations, with the well and the sewer, were uncovered a few years ago, was his work, and to the same period, though late in it, 1223–30, belongs the Tower of Coucy, probably the finest military structure ever built.

Taking a general view of the Castle of Conisborough, and giving due weight to the value of the evidence afforded by its remains, it is clear that the excavation of the ditch, both of the hill and the outwork, and the scarping of the former, were the original and English works, to which an early, though not the earliest, Norman lord added the curtain wall of the enceinte, and much of the lower gatehouse. He certainly also built a hall, kitchen, and lodgings within the inner area. The next addition of importance, the keep, was certainly made a century later. The curtain wall was taken down to make room for a part of it, and not only was there no bond between the old wall and the new tower, but the junction was carelessly and clumsily effected, as may be seen from its present condition. Probably some later alterations were made as regards the hall and lodgings. The wall near the entrance to the inner ward seems to have been partially rebuilt, but subsequently to this there does not seem to have been any addition of importance. The castle was no doubt rendered untenable during the wars of Charles I., and time and neglect have since completed the ruin.

It is singular that so strong and so remarkable a fortress should be but little noticed in the earlier records. Invention, indeed, in the absence of evidence, has attempted to fasten upon it an early history. “Conyng” has, by British antiquaries, been converted into a Breton Conan, and Caer-Conan, thus constructed, has been mixed up with Aurelius Ambrosius and the Kentish Hengist, who is asserted to have here fought, been slain and buried. There is, however, no evidence whatever connecting this place with either the Britons or Bretons, or the Romans, or Hengist. Everything bearing upon its origin is Saxon, but Saxon of a much later date than Hengist. Two tombstones carved in what is generally regarded as a præconquistal style were long seen in the churchyard, and are now placed for security in the church—so securely placed, indeed, as to be scarcely visible. The earliest mention of the place is probably in the testament of Wulfric Spot, the minister of King Ethelred, and the founder, in 1004, of the Abbey of Burton-on-Trent. By this document, printed by Dugdale in his Monasticon [I. 266], Wulfric bequeaths to Ælfred certain lands and fisheries of Cunuzesbury, so that about a.d. 1000 it belonged to that great Saxon. Mr. Hunter, whose history of Conisborough leaves nothing to be desired, points out that this devise was really a very ample one, for the fisheries were not those of the Don but of a part of the Soke of Hatfield, which were of great value. In Domesday, the lord of “Coningesboro” had twenty fisheries at Tudworth, yielding each 1,000 eels, and long afterwards they were important enough to be specially recorded. It seems therefore probable that, at least as early as the year 1000, Conisborough was the head of a large estate or Soke. The name of “Moothill field,” borne by an enclosure about three-quarters of a mile south-east of the castle, indicates the place of the court for the liberty or jurisdiction. The hill has been removed. There is a Moot-hall near the church.

While the castle has retained something of its ancient name, that of the ferry over the Don at its foot has undergone translation, and is known as Kingsferry. Who the king was who gave name to both has long been unknown; probably he was of Northumbria. The old Soke, the growth of centuries, received its final consolidation at the Conquest, when it was granted by William the King to William Earl Warren. At that time the fee was probably one extensive parish, for Conisborough seems to have been the mother church of Barthwell, Hatfield, and Sandal, three churches named in Domesday. Conisborough as a parish church, therefore, thinks Mr. Hunter, can scarcely be later than Ælfred, and may be older than even Doncaster itself. Such is the antiquity of the memories and speculations with which this very remarkable place is associated.

Immediately before the Conquest it belonged to Harold the Earl. Earl Warren evidently took it as it stood, and seated himself in the English “Aula” at Conisborough, having about him the twenty-eight vills which either wholly or in part were appended to it, and which included much of the Wapentakes of Strafordes and Siraches. These were the lands “quæ pertinent ad Coningesberc,” and which formed the “Socæ pertinens.”

The possessions of Earl Warren in England were extensive, but were especially valuable in Sussex, Norfolk, and Yorkshire; and what Lewes was to the former Conisborough was to the latter, and as the Soke became an Honour the castle was its “caput.” In Earl Warren’s foundation charter to Lewes Priory in 1078, it is provided that the monks should find him lodgings as he went and returned from Yorkshire, so that when he crossed from Normandy he took Lewes on his way. The connexion between his two lordships he cemented by giving to Lewes the church of Conisborough. Earl William was created Earl of Surrey about 1088, and died in 1089, and among his possessions stand enumerated the Lordship and Soke of Conisborough, with twenty-eight vills and hamlets.