We had planned to hit
Conisbrough on the way up to York a few days earlier, as it's only a few miles west of the A1, but the Bank Holiday
snafu with the rental car squashed that plan flat. And actually, it was just as well. Had we actually managed to collect the car in Edgeware as planned and tried to hit the town and its two star attractions - the Castle and
St Peter's Church - we would probably have been rushed for time to beat darkness. And neither of these places surrender their charms quickly.
I ducked into the car-park behind St Peter's church. We didn't see a sign saying not to, and didn't see the sign that actually said "Free Car Park"
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| Yeah, park it here mate. Conisbrough. |
which might have been a dead giveaway that it was ok to park here, and as I had someone behind me, I made a fast executive decision, which was rewarded to my astonishment with an available spot to park the car, the
only available spot. Right next to a Mercedes.
We didn't know this at the time, but the church is thought to be the oldest building in South Yorkshire, dating to the (say
what ??) 8th century. Well, maybe we knew it long before we were actually there, but had forgotten. Either way, experience told us that pretty much any castle town in England is likely to have an awesome church nearby. With a churchyard. Count on it.
St Peter's doesn't
look particularly old, at least from the outside.
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| Church of St Peter - Conisbrough |
Much of the exterior fabric is constructed from neatly aligned and regularly arranged stonework, screaming late Victorian, and browsing the headstones in the churchyard did little to dispel that notion.
But as soon as entering the porch, you realize you're in the presence of serious antiquity - a sculpture in the porch is considered Romano-British (suggesting it was originally carved for an earlier structure somewhere else and moved here...), so weathered no one is certain whether it was a Madonna and child, or St Peter with the keys to Heaven. (I'm going with Madonna...).
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St Peter with the keys to heaven...or Madonna and child.
St Peter's, Conisbrough |
The interior of the church is heavy, cavernous and relatively unadorned by the Victorians - the walls are largely undressed stone, in some places constructed from masonry from a nearby Roman bath house. Thankfully, many of the church's antiquities have neat little exhibit labels - Sharon called the place the best labeled church ever.
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| St Peter's - Conisbrough |
There are a number of medieval tomb cover slabs,
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| Tomb cover slab, c 14th century - St Peter's |
including one which is thought to be the earliest sculpted depiction of St George confronting a dragon - in this case, defending a freaked out bishop from the fire-breathing beast. Look carefully: dragon in the center right (with a defeated knight underfoot), George with sword and shield at the left center, the besieged bishop clutching his crosier beside him.
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| Fie, ye evil beaste ! St George and the Dragon, St Peter's, Conisbrough |
The church was a little intimidating - somewhat dark,
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| St Peter's - Conisbrough |
desperately quiet, humming faintly with ancient religious symbolism and savory bits of death iconography. We loved it.
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| St Peter's - Conisbrough |
We ambled down the road to the castle.
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| Down the hill toward Conisbrough Castle, just peeking over the rooftops on the right |
The name 'Conisbrough' is derived from Old English, meaning 'the defended burh of the king,' but the name predates the castle itself, which was actually not a royal property. The extant structure was built sometime around 1180 by
Hamelin Plantagenet, an illegitimate half-brother of
Henry II and husband to
Isabel, Countess of Surrey, descended from Norman nobility. Hamelin was a Crusader and lifelong supporter of Henry, even as his reign became troubled and his popularity eroded. Henry, it is worth mentioning, was a famously ambitious castle-builder himself. But this one was Hamelin's.
The place is imposing.
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| Conisbrough Castle |
But not unlike any number of extant early medieval castles, there isn't much once you get past the curtain wall. Conisbrough's keep is certainly impressive, but inside the castle walls was very little; the Great Hall was barely an outline on the grassy floor, the kitchen was a series of worn stone steps and flooring.
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| Remains of the Great Hall and kitchen - Inside the walls, Conisbrough Castle |
There is a little jail behind the south side of the wall, its stone toilet still in place.
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| Jail and privy - Conisbrough Castle |
The toilet suggests to people who study such things that the jail was a short-stay proposition, more like a time-out cell. Too small to be a dungeon, petty criminals would have been tossed in here to get their few-day corrective lesson in civic behavior; the hardcore bad guys were dealt with in some other way, somewhere else.
We walked through the keep, and followed the narrow and steep stairway upwards,
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| Stairway - Conisbrough Castle |
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| Stairway - Conisbrough Castle |
through a few rooms and eventually to the top, giving us a pretty nice view of the town and sweeping river valley below.
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| View from the top of the keep - Conisbrough Castle. |
On the way up, another toilet. Indoor plumbing was still a few centuries away for the Britains - the guys who worked this place would take their privacy in these little vestibules, their bio-byproducts tumbling down the exterior of the keep.
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| Bombs away - Privy, Conisborough Castle. |
Perhaps some unfortunate gob came by periodically to remove the pies. Or maybe not. One thing you learn reading about medieval times is that most people lived with the smell of shit, more or less all the time. Then again, it rains a lot in England - it could be that these things took care of themselves by the by.
It's a bit trivial to point out, but we'll do it anyway: every castle is different. Conisbrough had some terrific rooms, worn but ornate-in-their-own-way stone work under yawning arched ceilings....
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| Arched ceiling stonework - Conisbrough Castle |
heavy wooden doors...
really heavy wooden doors,
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| They don't make 'em like they used to - Conisborough Castle. |
circular rooms with defensively designed windows,
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| Castle room and fireplace - Conisbrough Castle |
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| Castle room - Conisbrough Castle. |
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| Window - Conisbrough Castle |
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| Conisbrough Castle. |
Except for some mild exhibit-grade lighting, and a few interpretative signs, we felt like we were
in a castle. A bit of fantasy displacement that most modern Americans can only speculate about. You can't force this sensation, not in a place like Conisbrough that's a partial ruin and a partial functioning structure. You have to let it tells its story, fragmentary and suggestive as it may be, in whispers and subtle gestures.
Outside the walls, the castle is a looming testament to power, wealth and will...
inside the walls, a ghostly patchwork of ground-level stonework, hardly recognizable as anything (except the toilet)...inside the keep, the place resonates dimly with the clomp of boots and clanging of steel, the swoosh of lord-y garments, the hushed murmurs of strategy and power and intrigues.
In a sense, I appreciated it more after we left. It reminded me that the Tower of London, far larger and more complete and dating to an only slightly more distant time, had very little of this fantasy resonance - crammed with tourists and the flashing of cell-cameras off perspex displays, the Tower felt like a museum.
This was a castle.
We might have been the last visitors to Conisbrough Castle for months - English Heritage was closing the Castle the next day for 'extensive renovations,' whatever that meant.
Getting back to the car, we met the owner of the Mercedes next to us. His name was Dave Steele; we chatted for some time about Yorkshire, the presence of tourists in this little town (they actually didn't get that many, he said), the durability of his beloved Benz and some recommendations for getting out of town. (Go out the way you came - the streets in the town center are really narrow..) He actually gave us his phone number and told us to look him up if we were ever by this way again - an odd and disarmingly friendly gesture. We still have it - and if we ever are there again, we'll ring him up and do tea.
