The View into the Inner Bailey

The View into the Inner Bailey. Conisbrough Castle. If you look down into the inner bailey and compare what you see with the reconstruction drawing on the far right you will see how much this space has changed over the centuries. In the Middle Ages, the bailey housed a great number of buildings, cramped together, continually extended and altered to suit the tastes and needs of the people living in the castle. The buildings varied from those of high status - such as the Great Hall and Chapel-more spacious and built of better materials; to well-appointed private lodgings and guest quarters standing next to service buildings including the kitchen and stores. The bailey was a busy place filled with activity - servants running errands, taking deliveries, welcoming travellers, dogs barking, horses being saddled and chickens pecking the grain delivered from the castle mill., The keep roof provided an excellent observation point but from where you are standing now you would not have been able to see out. Before the tops of the walls crumbled this was an enclosed passage which provided access to the castellated walkways above as well as entry to the central room above the bed chamber and small rooms within the turrets. These rooms fulfilled various functions. The one next to the entrance steps had previously been interpreted as a dovecote but we now think that the T-shaped sockets held the external timber platforms for hoisting supplies. The other rooms functioned as a bread oven and water tanks They would have been used and maintained by the guards or servants living in the central room., This reconstruction drawing shows how the roof may have appeared when the castle was first built.