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Updated: June 8, 2025
In feudal times it was probably a small castellated manor belonging perhaps to a knight who could not afford to build himself a donjon on some eminence and to fortify it with walls; but centuries later what remained of the original structure was patched up and considerably enlarged. Now, as I saw it in the dusk, it seemed a very ghost-haunted place.
The upper town, then, besides the church of Saint German, contains not only one, but two castles. On the highest ground of all, in the north-west corner of the enclosure, are the remains of a large polygonal keep, which keeps its name of the donjon. It makes very little show, being sadly crowded in by houses.
Along here there intruded a season when the Lobel shop tentatively experimented with costume dramas the Prisoner of Chillon wearing the conventional black and white in alternating stripes of a Georgia chain gang and doing the old Sing Sing lock step and retiring for the night to his donjon cell with a set of shiny and rather modern-looking leg irons on his ankles; Mary Queen of Scots and Catharine de' Medici in costumes strikingly similar; Oliver Goldsmith in Sir Walter Raleigh's neck ruff and Captain Kidd's jack boots.
This seems the best point for commanding the whole valley, and we may perhaps guess that a less devout prince than William would not have scrupled to raise his donjon at least within the consecrated precinct.
An irregular, many-angled pile of undressed stone heavily merloned on top, its remarkable feature was a tall donjon which a dingy white complexion made visible a great distance, despite its freckling of loopholes and apertures for machine artillery. Seeing its military importance, the Sultan left a garrison to hold it. He was also pleased to change its name to Acce-Chisar.
The young nobleman then submitted to the royal mandate without offering the slightest resistance; slept that night at the Louvre, and the next morning was taken to the donjon of Vincennes, while a general decree of banishment was pronounced against all the principal members of the faction.
He was penitent and resigned; his last confession was made, and it was arranged that on the morrow he should receive the Holy Communion at St. George's Chapel, within the precincts, from the hands of Lanfranc, ere led forth to die, as now ordered, upon that mound the visitor to Oxford still beholds, hard by that same donjon tower.
No sooner was he shut up in his cell than he fell to turning over in his mind how this escape could be made, and began minutely examining his prison, and, after discovering what he thought would be a sure way of getting out, he considered how best he might let himself down from the top of this enormous donjon tower, which went by the name of 'Il Mastio. He began by measuring the length of the linen strips, which he had cut and joined firmly together so as to form a sort of rope, and he thought there would be enough for his purpose.
For within two generations of the Norman conquest, while the old wooden abbey, destroyed by fire, was being replaced by that noble pile of stone whose ruins are still standing, the French abbot of Crowland sent French monks to open a school under the new French donjon, in the little Roman town of Grante-brigge; whereby so does all earnest work, however mistaken, grow and spread in this world, infinitely and for ever St.
Like Nottingham, town and castle stand on two heights, with a slight fall between them, and the town itself is strongly fortified, with a noble range of walls and towers which are largely preserved. The shattered donjon rises on the height where the Varenne runs through a narrow dell between the castle hill and a wild rock on the other side.
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