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THE MEDIAEVAL DOVECOTES IN
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE AND ITS BORDERS.
THIS is a simple little book about tbe mediaeval pigeon-cotes still left in this county, and of a few on its borders. I only include the dovecotes standing by themselves, or, what I may term them, the pigeon-cotes proper, built for pigeons alone, not those in the ends of barns or over stables. There is no doubt the cotes are buildings which were started long years ago, and were first introduced into this country by the Romans. Dovecotes are mentioned by Ovid, in lines written by him two thousand years ago:
“Aspicis ut veniant ad Candida tecta columbae,
Accipiat nullas sordida turris aves.”
“See to the whitewash’d cot what doves have flown!
While that unwhitewash’d not a bird will own.”
And again we find in the book “On Farming,” written by “Varro,” thirty-six years before Christ was born, a most delightful account of pigeons and cotes, so interesting that 1 do not hesitate to give it in his own words:
“Meanwhile Appius’s servant came from the Consul, and said that the angurs were wanted. Appius went out from the hall and at that moment there fluttered into it a flock of pigeons, giving Merula occasion to say to Axius, “Now if ever you had set up a pigeon-house you might have imagined these birds to be yours, wild though they are.” For in a pigeon-house there are usually the two kinds, one, rock-pigeons as some call them, kept in turrets and gable-ends (columen) of the farmstead—it is from Columen they get the name Columbae*—and seeking the highest places on buildings through their inborn timidity. Hence the wild kind mostly haunt turrets, flying to them from the fields and back again as the fancy takes them. The other kind of pigeon is less shy, for it feeds contentedly at home about the doorstep. This is generally white, while the other or wilder kind is of different colours, but not white. From the union of these two stocks comes a third mongrel kind, which is bred for profit. These are put in a place, called by some a peristeron, by others peristerophion, in which as many as five thousand birds are confined.
The peristeron is built in the shape of a large testudo, with a vaulted roof. It has a narrow entrance, with windows latticed in the Carthaginian fashion, or wider than these, and are furnished with a double trellis, so that the whole place may be well lit, and no snakes or other noxious animals may be able to get in. Inside every part of the walls and ceilings is coated with the smoothest possible cement made from marble; outside, too, the walls in the neighbourhood of the windows are plastered over to prevent a mouse or a lizard creeping by any way into the pigeon cotes. For nothing is more timid than a pigeon. Many round niches or nesting holes are made in a row, one for each pair of pigeons, and there should be as many rows as possible from ground to ceiling. Each niche should be made so that the pigeon may have an opening just big enough for it to come in and out, and should have an inside diameter of three palms (one foot) under each row of pigeon-holes. A shelf, eight inches broad, should be attached to the wall, which the birds can use as a landing and walk on to it when they like. There should be water flowing in for drinking and washing, for pigeons are very clean birds. The pigeon-keeper should therefore sweep the place out several times a month, as the dirt made there is an excellent manure, so much so that some authors speak of it as the best of all. If any pigeon has come to any harm the keeper must look after it, if one has died he must remove it, and if any young birds are fit for sale he must bring them out. He must also have a fixed place which is shut off from the others by a net to which the hen birds that are sitting may be transferred, and it must be possible for the mothers to fly out of it away from the pigeon-cote. For this there are two reasons, because in case they are losing appetite, and are growing feeble in captivity, a flight into the country and the free air brings them back to their strength, and because they act as a decoy, for they themselves in any case come back to the cote because of their young ones. That pigeons do return to a place is shown by the fact that people often let them fly from their laps in the theatre, and they return home, and unless they did they would never be let loose. Food is given them in small troughs placed round the walls, which are filled from outside by means of pipes. They are fond of millet, wheat, barley, peas, kidney beans and vetch. These methods should be used as far as possible by those who keep wild pigeons in turrets, and also in the roofs of farm buildings.
For your pigeon-cote you must get birds of the right age, not young chicks, and not old hens, and as many cocks as hens. Nothing is more prolific than the pigeon. Thus within a space of forty days a hen bird conceives, lays, hatches, and rears its young. And this is continued all the year round, the only interval being from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. They have two young ones at a time, and when they have grown up and come to their strength these go on breeding at the same rate as their mothers. Those who fatten young pigeons to increase their market value keep them apart from the others as soon as they are covered with down. Then they stuff them with chewed white bread in winter twice a day, in summer three times. Those who are starting to get their feathers have their legs broken, and, left in the nest, are given over to their mothers’ care, so she feeds them and herself all day long. Birds thus reared fattened more quickly than the others.
At Rome, if a pair are handsome, of good colour, without blemish, and of good breed, they sell quite commonly for 200 sesterces (£1 12s. 0d.), while a pair of exceptional merit will fetch 1,000 sesterces (£8.) Lately, when a trader wanted to buy them at that price from L. Axius, a Roman eques, the latter refused to part with them for less than 400 denarii (12 guineas). Said Axius, "If I could have bought a ready-made pigeon-house, just as I bought earthenware pigeon-boxes, I should by this time have gone to buy it and have it sent on to my villa.” "Just as though,” said Pica, “there were not at this moment plenty of pigeon-houses in Rome, as well as in the country, or do you consider that people who have dove-cotes under tiles do not possess pigeon-houses, though some of these have plant worth more than 100,000 sesterces (£800). Now I should advise you to buy the whole plant belonging to one of them, and before building in the country, to learn thoroughly here in Rome, how to pocket the big gain of fifty per cent every day.” Thus writes Varro, the greatest book writer of his or any other day, for it is said he wrote 490 books. Thus we know there were a lot of pigeon-cotes in Rome, and also in Italy, before the birth of Christ.
Now I give what Charles Waterton, of Walton Hall, near Wakefield, Yorks., says about dovecote pigeons, their habits, and how best to keep them. Waterton was one of the keenest lovers and protectors of birds of his or any other time, an eminent field naturalist, and, for the times he lived in, a great traveller. He wrote three volumes called “Essays on Natural History.” They were published in 1839, 1844 and 1858, mostly about birds, and are delightful reading, and clearly show what an accurate observer he was. He was also the first Englishman who made a sanctuary for birds, which consisted of his beautful park of 268 acres, well wooded, and having in it a lake of 26 acres. This he surrounded by a great stone wall running from 8 feet to fourteen in height. It tost him 9,000 pounds, even in those days when a pound went as far, or further, than two do now. No gun was ever fired inside his fortification as he called it. He also had bird boxes put up on many trees, and built a tower for starlings and owls, and cut holes in decayed trees for the latter, for he loved them and knew their value. Here he lived to a good old age, and when he died was buried in his loved park.
He writes in 1837, the following, which gives his idea why the keeping of great quantities of pigeons is dying out, and I think up the following year and take time and money to destroy. A dovecot ought to be well lighted, and it should be white-washed inside once every year, and cleaned out twice. The barn owl and starling are harmless visitors. They repair to it merely for shelter, or for a breeding-place. I always like to see them in mine, which is a lofty and spacious building, and last season (1836) it furnished seventy-three dozens of young pigeons. The dovecot pigeons, like the rest of the genus, are remarkable for retiring to their roost at an early hour, and leaving it late in the morning. Nothing can surpass the attachment of these birds to the cot of their choice, and provided you do not absolutely molest them by repeated discharges of firearms they can scarcely be driven from it. Our ancestors generally built their dovecots in an open field apart from the farmyard, fearing, probably, that the noise and bustle might interupt the process of incubation. Our pigeons may be divided into two classes, viz., dovecot pigeons, which are destined for the use of the table, and fancy birds which are carefully kept apart so as to keep the breed pure, and are kept by pigeon fanciers, whilst the farmer confines his attentions to the more profitable class, which is usually known by the name of dovecote pigeons, and also by some are called blue rocks. They feed in all parts of the country, often quite a distance from their home. There existed a law, namely, that if anybody should kill old dovecot pigeons (no matter when) he was fined one guinea for every old bird wilfully destroyed, and even the Lord of the Manor himself could not transgress with impunity this useful law, and in order to encourage fair play it was deemed fit by common consent to prohibit the placing of what was called a saltcat in any dovecot. Now a saltcat was understood to be a composition of barley meal, salt and corn, forming a most tempting repast to the whole race of dovecot pigeons. When I was a boy, I have heard my father say the owner was not allowed to whitewash the outside of it, lest too great a number of other people’s pigeons might forsake their own ordinary cot, and be tempted to take up their abode in it. Nothing can be more attractive to the pigeon family than a dovecot well whitewashed inside and out. There were pigeon cots to to be seen in every village, or near it, in this part of Yorkshire, generally in a croft at a proper distance from the farm establishment for fear that dogs barking, or the sound of the flail, or the passing of the labourers would disturb the incubating pigeons and thus lessen the profits of the cote.
But my father, who was a keen observer of Nature, knew better, and he erected his modern dovecote nearly in the centre of his buildings. The very first season proved that he had acted wisely, and I, myself, in latter times, have known ninety-three dozens of young pigeons to have been taken out of this cote in the course of one year. Whilst the owner could protect his pigeons, numerous square cotes of handsome architecture, embellished the sylvan scenery of the adjacent country, and as old pigeons were not in request for the table these dovecotes were sure to have a plentiful supply of breeding birds, and the farmers vied with each other in keeping theirs in thorough repair. These buildings contained separate holes for each pair of pigeons, and in front of these holes was a row of bricks, from wall to wall, jutting out like a terrace, so that the birds could alight and walk on. A window, sometimes two, gave light to the interior of the building, and there was a large square, glazed frame on the top of the roof, supported by four short legs, just giving room enough betwixt the roof and the frame to allow of the ingress and egress of the pigeons. It was called a glover, supposed to be a corruption of the French word onvert, that is, an opening. Inside the cot there was an upright shaft working in a socket on the floor, and also on the top by means of a pivot, which was let into a crossbeam. A frame forming steps from the bottom to the top, and joined here and there into the upright shaft afforded an easy ascent to the climber in quest of young pigeons. Up this he used to mount, step by step, and with one foot on it and the other on the jutting bricks, already mentioned, he could go round the dovecot searching every hole in the place with perfect safety to himself. This ladder is called a potence, A well-planned dovecote ought to have solid walls for a couple of yards from the foundation to prevent vermin from making their way upwards, and there ought to be light from a window independent from that which enters at the glover. My new dovecote has two large windows, and six hundred and sixty-six holes or recesses for the purpose of incubation. It is cleaned out and whitewashed inside once a year. As dovecot pigeons are considered a kind of common stock throughout the country, no farmer ever takes umbrage when he sees a flight of strangers’ pigeons alight at his barn door, because he is quite aware that the pigeons that incubate in his own cote have a similar privilege in other premises at any distance from home. Whilst 1 was in Italy, my dovecot was robbed twice of its old birds, so being determined to put a stop to the plunder I pulled my old cote down and I have erected another in a safer place, which I have made so high that no ladder can be found of sufficient length to reach the roof. Dovecots are now much diminished in numbers (written in 1857). Those which formerly stood in paddocks have either been pulled down or left to remain without any hopes on the part of their owners that they will ever again become productive, whilst those in the villages exhibit an appearance of manifest neglect on the part of the farmers. In fact, the modern amusement of pigeon-shooting entails poverty on the pigeon-cot. The village of Walton bears ample testimony to this.”
I have drawn largely on Varro, because he tells us something of pigeons and pigeon-cotes in ancient times, as far back as before Christ was born, and on Charles Waterton, of Walton Hall, Yorks., because he gives us an interesting and clear account of these birds and their houses in his time.
After giving so full an account of what Varro writes, nearly two thousand years ago, and also what Charles Waterton says about them in the earlier part of the last century, it leaves little for me to add. Why were they built? To house and breed pigeons, so as to provide fresh meat at a time when fresh beef and mutton could not be had. In days gone by, I might say in mediaeval days, it was customary for the Lord of the Manor and other persons of position to have a dovecote in order to supply their tables with fresh meat and thus relieve the monotony of eating salted food all through the winter, for it was necessary to reduce the live stock at the end of each summer, when the pastures became bare and it was difficult to provide provender wherewith to fatten cattle and sheep during the winter months. All animals which were to be kept for breeding purposes, or young store stock, were turned out in the grass fields and were fed on hay or straw, and, you will notice, the grass fields about the old villages and farms had hedges growing in any way but straight. They were planted on banks and had curves here and there. This was to shelter the cattle during the storms of snow and from the bitter winds. All the other animals that were fit for the butcher were killed and salted down. This food got very monotonous, and from time to time pigeon pies and pigeons boiled and roasted were a nice change. During these times pigeon-cotes were dotted about here and there, and vast quantities of pigeons were kept, for I have seen it stated that in those times there were understood to be about twenty-six thousand of these cotes about in England and Scotland, and if we say they would in each cote average five hundred birds, and this would be a very small average, we have over 13,000,000 pigeons. I have it on high authority there would be nearly twice as many. At any rate there was an enormous quantity of doves kept.
Now why did this keeping of pigeons die out ? Well, it was in this way. Early in the seventeenth century turnips were introduced into England, from Holland, and soon after this clovers and grasses were grown, being sown with the corn on the fields which had grown turnips. These were mown the following year in some of the fields and made into hay, and with the turnips, which were now a general crop, provided abundant food for beasts and sheep. This not only carried them over the winter months, but fattened them better than simple hay could have done, and altered the whole system of farming, bringing a great quantity of wild land under cultivation, for even the light, poor, sandy soils if well manured will produce a fair crop of roots, and if you get a fair crop and eat it off with sheep and give them cake, that field will grow not only a fair crop of corn, but a good crop of seeds, so that thousands of acres which had been poor, wild grass fields, now provided roots and seeds, and fresh meat could be procured all the year round. It was in those times the dovecotes began to be neglected, and now have almost died out. For seventy years back it was quite the exception not to find on every farm of any size a dovecote with pigeons in it. Now it is the exception to find one that has pigeons in it. This is the great reason they have died out, the growth of turnips and seeds. Charles Waterton gave his reason, stating that because the price offered for pigeons for shooting matches was so high that thieves were tempted to steal them, and owners were tempted to sell the old birds. That, in a very small way, was one of causes, but it was the turnips that did it, say I and others. Even now when tame pigeon shooting matches have been made illegal there is no sign that the cotes that still stand are being again re-stocked.
THE ROCK DOVE.
SOME of the readers of this little book may not know what the pigeons which were kept in the days past were like. The following account of them may be of interest. It is now universally admitted that it is from the stock of the wild rock doves that all the varieties of our pigeons have sprung, and that the dovecote pigeon of to-day is the descendant of those birds that our ancestors stocked their pigeon cotes with, viz., the wild rock dove, and this is a description of the bird.
The male is from a foot to fourteen inches in length, his head and neck are dark slate blue, glossed all round with green, which shines a steely blue when held in certain positions and in different lights. Below, on the forepart and sides of the neck, it is richly shot with coppery purple. The back and lesser wing coverts are a pale dove blue, the lower part of the back, just above the tail, is white, below this white patch the upper tail coverts are slate blue. The tail has the top part slate blue, and the end of it is black, the breast is greyish-blue, there are twelve feathers in the tail, iris pale orange, the eyelids reddish, and the legs and toes are carmine red. The wings expand to the width of two feet one inch to two feet three inches, have the first feather shorter than the second and third, which are about the same length, the fourth is much shorter than the first. There are two bars of black across the wings, the second, the shorter one, ends near the body with a black patch. The female is slightly smaller than the male, and her plumage is not so bright. The young when hatched are covered with a yellow down. We find the rock pigeons living and nesting on the Eastern side of England, where the cliffs are high, more commonly than on the Western, still they occur sparingly in Somerset, Devonshire and Cornwall, and in scattered colonies along the Welsh coast, but it is on the Yorkshire coast, about Flamborough, that they abound, also between Filey and Scarborough. Some few inhabit the cliffs in Northumberland and Berwickshire, and here and there along the East coast of Scotland, and I have seen a goodly number in the cliffs of Orkney and Shetland, but never any in St. Kilda, though I have steamed round that lone Western isle several times. No doubt it is that there would be little food for them. No bird gets on the wing quicker, and the way they rush out of the sea cliffs over the boat is an eye-opener. Thus they offer a severe test of skill to the gunner, even to that crack performer, the late Lord Ripon, who, when staying with Lord Londesborough, at Scarborough, made several expeditions to the Speeton Cliffs and found if he could kill four out of six it was about a fair average, as he was handicapped by the rocking of the boat and not being able to turn round as quickly as he wanted.
THE ROCK DOVE OR BLUE ROCK.
FROM THIS PIGEON ALL OUR PIGEONS HAVE SPRUNG.
A LONG the coast where beetling cliffs o’er hang the surging foam,
'Tis in these cliffs, in caverns deep, the Blue Rocks make their home.
At daybreak and at evening time they swiftly come and go,
On whistling pinions, through the air, in sun, in rain and snow.
Way inland to the stubble fields in companies they fly,
And feed on corn and other seeds their sharp eyes quickly spy.
Starting directly daylight breaks, and back at close of day,
Be the home journey short or long, they never light or stay;
And when the winds are very rough their flight is always low,
Just clearing the trees and hedges, a dove blue crowd they go.
Then skimming o’er the frowning cliff, they wheel in circling flight,
And sweeping round above the sea, upon the ledges light.
Here, if the eve is still and calm, they strut about and coo,
Their few and simple notes are these, Coo-ru; Coo-ru; Coo-ru.
Then when the dusky shadows fall on rock and sea and wave,
They pass into their sleeping place, in fissure and in cave;
And here they spend a restful night, whether its short or long,
Sitting in pairs in peaceful sleep, lulled by the wild waves’ song.
J. WHITAKER.
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* I may here say this chapter, and in fact all the book, was translated from the Latin by Mr. Lloyd Storr-Best, M.A.