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Kevin Berry discovers how Conisbrough Castle
provides pupils with an entertaining and fascinating look at Norman
life
"What can you see?" asks Big John. "And I'm looking
for a one-word answer!"
"Everything," his audience of windswept teenagers
choruses.
On the very top of Conisbrough Castle's magnificent
keep we can indeed see everything for miles. This strategically
important fortress dominates South Yorkshire's Don valley. It once
controlled the border between Mercia and Northumbria.
"Any soldiers moving and we can soon see them," John
tells us. "We can see them in the woods, because they will disturb
the birds and kick up dust."
John Pilkington is one of the Conisbrough Castle
guides. His audience is a group of Year 10 pupils from Outwood
Grange College, Wakefield. Today, John is dressed as a Norman
steward. He talks as a steward, but more often in the third person.
He has everyone's rapt attention. He unfolds life in a Norman castle
in a wholly fascinating manner. John compares living through a
medieval winter to living under siege, and the comparison is apt.
His description of a castle under attack is also
vivid. "Forget this notion of boiling oil," his voice booms out
against the wind. "Oil was just too precious to waste on your
enemies. You would use red hot sand and boiling hot water. Imagine
getting that pouring down on you when you have heavy armour on!"
The lord's fireplace, large but hardly magnificent
to a modern eye, would have astonished any peasantry if they were
ever allowed to see it.
William de Warren, the first earl of that line,
built the first wooden motte and bailey structure at Conisbrough. He
is thought to have been the richest resident of these islands in the
last millennium, worth £57 billion in today's money.
"I didn't know much about the structure of a castle.
Now I do", says Gavin Marshall. "John makes it humorous and so
interesting. Rather than get it all from textbooks I feel better
with someone speaking to us."
That is a view shared by everyone from Outwood
Grange. What they have heard they will remember. These students are
curious and John has done much to stir that curiosity. He has many
years of experience as a medieval re-enactor and interpreter, as do
his guide colleagues.
"I love working here," John says. "Every morning
when I walk up the hill I think, well, there she is. And she'll be
there long after I've gone."
Conisbrough Castle has outlasted the Industrial
Revolution. The view from the keep used to take in a landscape of
collieries, terraced houses and railway lines. Now the land is green
and pleasant.
Sir Walter Scott set part of his novel Ivanhoe at
Conisbrough. The keep is considered to be one of the finest examples
of medieval architecture in Europe. That's because a section of
outer wall fell away; Henry VIII consequently decommissioned the
castle, so it was not used during the Civil War. Over the centuries
builders tried to steal some of the stone. There was some damage,
but the castle, especially the keep, was too well built.
"I didn't realise there'd be so much history here,"
says Ben Wildey. "When Big John asked us to try and imagine how
people felt, that made a real impact on us. I've learned a lot
today."
It is noon and time for the Outwood Grange pupils to
get on the coach.
There are murmurs of disappointment because the time
really has flown.
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