Coo Ca Choo

I came across an unusual and interesting structure just this week, rather by chance.

A builder, in the process of clearing a very overgrown former farmstead in a Yorkshire village to make way for new housing had come across a squat stone outhouse amongst the vegetation.

The exterior was nothing special; Local random stone coursing and the skeletal framework of what had been a pantile roof with trees growing through gaping holes.

The interior was a mass of bird faeces, or using the old name guano, some 4 metres deep indicating a good few decades if not a couple of hundred years of defecation in that place. This was not unusual for a long abandoned building and within an environment returned to nature where the avian occupants lived in isolation and a complete absence of disturbance from humans.

The mass of bird poo did constitute a problem for the development of the site, mainly because of its implications for health and safety. Whilst once highly prized and valued for its fertilising properties such an accumulation of old guano constituted a bit of a nightmare.

It just had to be excavated manually, bagged up and removed to a proper waste depository.

As the consolidated mass was reduced in size it became apparent to the operatives that the inner surface of the stone building had some interesting features.

Just below the roof eaves, the first area to be exposed there was a warm earthy colour showing through. It contrasted with the mellow, rustic stonework and was noticeable in its regularity which meant that it had to be of man made origin.

The gradual scraping and working loose of the guano began to reveal what resembled the appearance of the exterior of the Coliseum in Rome or what some of those working in that uncomfortable environment recognised as the interior of a columbarium or depository for funereal urns.

The smooth surface was a rustic fired clay around regular shaped openings of an upturned spade shape as on a deck of cards.

On reflection the apertures were too small for a typical cremation urn.

Projecting from the flat end of each opening was a shallow ledge.

After a few tons of excrement had been so extracted the full detail was revealed.

The building was a dovecote, likely to date from the 17th century or earlier.

Although long since diminished as a farming method the dovecote had been the most common method of pigeon keeping from the time of the Normans around 1000AD. 

Hearken back to the Medieval era in Britain when in the winter months there was a real problem in the food supply chain for fresh meat. Cattle could not be kept when there was no reliable source of fodder and so the humble pigeon was farmed on an almost industrial scale as at least one source of nutrients essential for human health and sustenance.

Who can honestly say that they have eaten pigeon?

I am certain that I have not although my carnivorous repertoire has included kangaroo, zebra, wild boar, frogs legs and yes, I thought it was beef mince, but it was horse.

Our attitude today towards the pigeon, the once staple of the Medieval diet is very mixed.

Some regard that common, feral bird that frequents our town and city centres as little more than winged vermin and others worship and cosset them as almost family members where they are nurtured for their homing skills in what can be quite an obsessive and ruthless pastime.

That Dovecote ,now preserved in its renovated stone enclosure is a graphic reminder of the precarious existence of our not too distant ancestors.