This is one of those buildings I’d seen for years across the fields, but hadn’t got round to a proper visit until comparatively recently. Maybe at the back of my mind was the fact that I’ve featured dovecotes on this blog several times – perhaps another was a dovecote too far. But having a further look at my pictures, I’m inspired to share them, especially as this one is a little different from the others because of its history.
As many readers will know, dovecotes in England were restricted in use in the medieval period – only lords of the manor or members of the clergy were allowed to keep doves or pigeons and take the birds’ young as food. Many villages had one dovecote for lord or priest, but most of these fell out of use – if not earlier, then in the 19th century, when corn prices soared and birds ate more grain than the value of the meat they produced. The dovecote in the Gloucestershire village of Naunton was one that survived because it was converted for another use.
As you can see from my first photograph, this dovecote is square and built of Cotswold limestone. The roof has four gables and is covered with local Cotswold stone ‘slates’. At the apex is a tiny turret with entrance holes for the birds. The location of this entrance is such that a bird could get a good view of the sky and possible predators before venturing out. That gabled roof design is very typical of the Cotswolds, and the resulting valleys where the sections of roof meet show the skill of the skill of the Cotswold roofer. What I’d not considered until I looked this building up online* was that these sections of roof provide attractive perching surfaces for the birds. At any time of day, at least one part of the roof will be sheltered from the wind and when the sun is out, there’s always one section of the roof that its rays can meet.
Inside there were originally about 1200 nesting holes, which makes this a very large dovecote. At some point the bottom five layers of holes were blocked, perhaps because of incursions of rats, but there are still 903 holes, which would have provided meat for a very large household.
By the 19th century the building was used as a mill. This may have been the time when the lean-to extension was added. Photographs from the 19th century show narrow streams connecting this building with the nearby river, acting as the head- and tail-race for the waterwheel within. So instead of housing wheat-eating doves, the building ground the grain into flour. I don’t know how long the mill operated – several decades probably. The lean-to is seen without a roof in a photograph of 1949. Now both dovecote and lean-to remain empty, accessible to visitors and cared for by the Naunton Dovecote Trust. Empty, that is, apart from a few avian inhabitants, a couple of whom can be seen perching on a high beam in my second photograph.
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* I’m indebted to the excellent website of the Naunton Dovecote Trust for this and other information.
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