Conisbrough Castle - Conisbrough Castle in Fiction

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 Brochs 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.