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Conisbrough Castle boasts the finest Circular Norman Keep Tower in the UK. This testament to the Stone Masons of medieval England was built during the 1180s by the fifth Earl of Surrey, Hamelin Plantagenet half brother of the most powerful of the Angevin Kings of England, Henry II. Once one of the de Warenne family's northern strongholds, it is reported in Leyland's Survey 1537-39, that a section of wall, the gatehouse and one of the floors of the Keep had all fallen. By the time of the English Civil War of the 1640s the castle was pronounced to be Indefensible by the Parliamentary Forces of Oliver Cromwell, thereby escaping the destruction that awaited so many of England's finest castles. Since that time little had been done to preserve the fabric of the monument until the middle of the twentieth century, when the castle was given into the care of the state. In recent years the castle site has seen vast improvements, a specially designed Visitor Centre, the conversion of the custodian's lodge into Tea Rooms, the installation of flood lights and in 1994 the re-institution of the roof and floors of the eight hundred year old keep tower. Today Conisbrough Castle attracts over 37,000 visitors per year from all over the world, each one takes home a lasting impression of one of the finest buildings of Medieval England.
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