Pigeon Cote

Pigeon cote, early C19.

MATERIALS: fair-faced, buff coloured brick, laid in English-bond, with ashlar dressings.

PLAN: a rectangular-plan, two-storey tower structure.

EXTERIOR: the main classical-style (south-west) elevation has an ashlar plinth and is pierced by a central doorway; it has a round brick arch, with ashlar voussoirs and keystone, and a projecting brick surround. The doorway is situated beneath a matching first-floor window opening, with an ashlar window sill. The elevation has brick corner pilasters, with plain ashlar capitals blocks, separated by a projecting dentil eaves course. The side and rear elevations are blind, the pilasters wrap around the corners of the two side elevations and the dentil eaves course, which formally supported timber guttering, runs around the whole of the structure. The building is un-roofed.

INTERIOR: the ground-floor room has an earth floor; the walls are fair-faced brick. The doorway has ashlar blocks set within the jambs, with projecting wrought-iron hinge pins, a latch catch, and a bar stay. It is flanked to either side by a lamp recess, one with a missing ashlar stone sill, and the left recess has had a hole broken through the brickwork. A pair of wrought-iron ‘L’ brackets is set into the rear wall, to store a loft ladder. The timber first-floor is missing; however, each of the side walls within the structure has joist slots to support the floor. The surfaces of the pigeon loft walls have been white-washed to floor level, with six rows of alighting ledges and nesting boxes to each wall, including either side of the window in the front wall, giving a total of 296 nesting boxes. The boxes are entered off the projecting brick alighting ledges by small gaps in the brickwork, allowing access into a cavity space within the depth of the wall.