Dovecot, St Catherine's House, Howdenhall Road, Edinburgh

The walled garden and outbuildings at St Catherine's House, located on Howdenhall Road in Edinburgh, date back to the early 18th century. The garden is situated to the east of the house and features a range of outbuildings against the northwest brick-lined garden wall. At the center of these outbuildings is an 18th-century lectern dovecote, which is connected by later outbuildings, possibly from the early 19th century, to a laundry on the right and a horse mill along with a gardener's cottage on the left.

The laundry building was likely constructed around 1835 during the second phase of extensions to the house. Initially, it may have served as a coach house before being converted into a laundry. It has a rectangular plan and is built of rubble with rusticated ashlar quoins. The southwest and northwest elevations are elegantly designed, featuring a blind, blocked three-centred arched opening on the northwest front and an arcade of three arches on the southwest, two of which have recessed margins. The building has a slated piended roof with a louvered gableted ridge vent at the center, flanked by two axial steel vents. The northeast re-entrant elevation has been altered.

Inside, the laundry is subdivided, and a timber-panelled ceiling was added when the building was repurposed for laundry use.

The dovecote is of the lectern type and has been re-roofed. It features brick-blocked flight holes in the northwest wall above a rarcourse, with substantial stone brackets supporting the flight holes and four tiers of nesting boxes on either side. There is a plain rubble-built lean-to linking the ranges, which has undergone alterations to its openings. The octagonal horse mill has a red tiled roof and a weather vane, although the mill machinery has been lost; the horse mill drive shaft originally powered a saw in the building to the northeast. The gardener's cottage is located at the end of this range.

The walled garden likely has its origins in the 17th century, although it was altered and heightened in the early 19th century. A distinctive round turret survives at the northwest angle, which likely mirrored the northeast angle where only a concave wall section remains from the original 17th-century garden. Finials were added to the northeast and openings were introduced in the southeast wall during the early 19th century.