Britain - Ireland - Castles. Castles of England - Conisbrough Castle. Map by mapchart. The most impressive feature of the ruins is the hundred foot high circular keep supported by six buttresses giving it a star shaped cross section - it is one of the finest and most unusual Norman keeps in England.
The keep is at the eastern side of a central courtyard surrounded by a curtain wall. The southern part of the wall has now collapsed. The gateway is on the south side of the courtyard. Along the north side of the courtyard are remains of a number of buildings including the Great Hall, buttery, kitchens and bake house.
Along the east side of the courtyard are the remains of the accommodation blocks and the Great Chamber. Restoration work on the keep commenced in , and a wooden roof and internal floors were rebuilt.
The castle re-opened to the public in Edmund subsequently ordered the renovation of the inner ward accommodation. Following Langley's death in the castle passed down to his son Edward second Duke of Albermale who had by then become the Duke of York.
The Duke died in at the Battle of Agincourt and the castle passed to his son Richard who in turn died by execution in with his wife Maud taking over the castle until her death in Richards's son then inherited Conisbrough and following his coronation as Edward IV in Conisbrough became a permanent royal castle. By the time of Henry VIII's reign Conisbrough had fallen into disrepair with much of the damage that can still be seen today seeming to have occurred by the early 's.
Henry commissioned a survey of the castle in to determine what state it was in with surveyors reporting back that the castle was in a dilapidated state nearer a ruin than a castle.
Conisbrough then passed to the Coke family before being acquired by the Duke of Leeds in By the time of the English Civil War such was the damage to the castle that no further destruction was suffered as most of the defences had already been torn down, while the keep remained intact as it had previously done and still is today.
The then owner of Consibrough Castle was John de Warenne who had a personal vendetta with Thomas due to his efforts to bar an attempted divorce between himself and his wife, Joan. Scandalously one of John's squires eloped with Joan to Reigate Castle prompting Thomas, one of the most powerful magnates in the country, to commence a private war. Thomas seized Conisbrough and Sandal Castle in revenge and retained both until he was executed in March The properties were returned to the Warenne family by Edward II in By the Tudor period the castle was ruinous and this aided its survival; when it came to the Civil War, which saw so many great castles slighted on the orders of Parliament, the castle was regarded as ruinous and was neither garrisoned nor seen as a post-war threat.
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