Eardisland, Herefordshire

Fit for new purposes

Looking for something to post at a time when I'd not seen anything new recently, I made a virtual visit to Eardisland by browsing through my photo library. I was reminded that, have diverted to this Herefordshire place when en route to somewhere else, I'd found not only the preserved AA telephone box that I posted some years ago, but also a wonderful brick-built dovecote. They say it's 18th century, although at least one source dates the building to the 17th. The most recent edition of the Pevsner Buildings of England Herefordshire volume sums it up: c. 1700.

Whatever its exact age, it's impressive, even though it shows signs of repair and alteration in the 20th century. The louvre at the top where the doves came in and out, at the junction of the four-gabled roof, is still there, and there are still large stretches of original brickwork, albeit punctuated by a large section of presumably later bricks in a different colour on the flank wall. The square, four-gable shape is not an unusual one for a dovecote. I suppose it has the twin benefits of allowing the birds to fly up into the louvre exit from whichever side they're nesting on, while also producing a pleasing shape that can often act as a focal point in a yard, garden, or, as here, a village street. This dovecote is quite tall, and unusually has ground and upper floors: the ground floor was originally a garden room while the doves occupied the upper space.

The dovecote looks well as you approach it over the bridge, and it's good to see it has found new uses – changes of use are often vital if ancient buildings are to be preserved, and can enable a building to become not just a heritage asset but also useful, and so more likely to last. The dovecote now houses a museum on the upper floor and a small shop downstairs. As I was passing quickly through when I took this photograph, I didn't call in at the the shop, but I see online that it's run by volunteers for the benefit of the community. Such an enterprise can be an asset to a village, especially if it has has lost an earlier village store or Post Office. Small shops become community hubs, centres where people not only buy provisions but also exchange news and information, and pass the time of day. Next time I'm passing, I'll make a point of stopping, saying 'hello', and, I hope, making a purchase or two.

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* There is a reference to a dovecote here in 1469, but that would have been a different structure.

Eardisland, Herefordshire

Brotherhood of the road

AA telephone boxes were scrapped in 2002, but a few still stand as a reminder of the hundreds of black and yellow boxes that once dotted the British landscape. They were originally known as sentry boxes, and when the first ones were erected in the years before World War I they were intended as shelters for AA patrolmen who were there to help with directions, repairs, and advice to the growing number of motorists who joined the Automobile Association. In the 1920s, AA members were issued with keys, so that they could open any sentry box and make use of the contents – a lamp, maps, and so on. Eventually, the boxes became telephone kiosks, equipped with one-button telephones with which they could summon help when broken down. All the boxes were numbered, so if callers simply gave the box number from which they were calling, the operator would know their exact location and send a patrol to help.

From 1956 onwards the four-gabled black and yellow box was the standard design. Such boxes stood not just for a welcome helping hand, but for a tradition of fellowship and support summed up for many motorists by the AA’s distinctive winged badge – I am old enough to remember the anger among older members when this badge was replaced by a more modern, and much blander, one in the 1960s.

The AA box that caught my eye stands by the Cross Inn in the village of Eardisland just off the A44 in northern Herefordshire. It started its life at Legions Cross, just outside Eardlisland on the A44, and my copy of the 1962 edition of the AA Illustrated Road Book of England and Wales confirms the presence of an AA box here. In the age of the satnav and cellphone it seems to come from another era – a time when the AA, with its uniformed patrolmen, winged badge, yellow vehicles, and shiny telephone kiosks constituted a true motoring fraternity.