Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 2 (2011), p. 336

John McCann is an acknowledged authority on English dovecotes and the Wiltshire Buildings Record is an exemplary body for the work it has done on recording buildings over the last 30 years. As we would expect therefore, this book is a thorough and scholarly investigation of the provision for pigeons within the county. As well as containing detailed descriptions and photographs, sometimes with architectural drawings, of some 60 surviving examples identified in the county, it also lists those that have disappeared, but to which there are documentary references. A further section deals with the much smaller pigeon lofts and nest holes in houses, barns, stables and other buildings.

This book is more than an illustrated gazetteer, although the descriptive list runs to 121 pages; it also discusses the changing importance of pigeon keeping and how it was managed. The main purpose of a dovecote was to house nest boxes in an environment reminiscent of the rock crevices that the pigeons (or domesticated Blue Rock Doves) would inhabit in the wild. In the dovecote the eggs were hatched and the young birds known as squabs would be taken just before they were ready to fledge. Because their flying muscles had never been used, the meat was exceptionally tender and much prized as a delicacy. Dovecotes were therefore prestigious buildings and part of a luxurious lifestyle. The period when the squabs were available was limited from spring through to autumn and so, McCann argues on the basis of household accounts, they did not provide a winter source of meat as has sometimes been claimed.

The design of the dovecote is placed firmly within a functional and historical framework with short chapters explaining the history of pigeon keeping, what dovecotes were and how they were built. It was necessary for the dovecote to provide protection from predators and this would affect their design. Up to the eighteenth century the main dangers came from birds of prey, foxes and members of the cat family. For this reason windows were rare, but instead ventilation was through louvres. The threat changed, however, after about 1720, following the introduction of the brown rat on trading vessels from East Asia. McCann explains that as the brown rat can climb or jump up a smooth vertical surface of hard material more than three feet high, the design had to change. After about 1750 dovecotes were built with raised doorways and nest boxes, deep foundations which could not be burrowed under and close mortar joints. As the value of grain increased and the amount of bare fallow, on which pigeons could graze, decreased, pigeon keeping declined. It was condemned by agricultural commentators such as Arthur Young, and the heyday of the dovecote was over by the mid-nineteenth century.

Wiltshire is a county particularly rich in dovecotes but this is not simply a picture book of quaint and picturesque buildings, although the illustrations are indeed of a very high standard. Rather their form is discussed as being governed by their function, which, as far as protection from predators was concerned, changed through time. The gazetteer is followed by a section that discusses the great variety of designs of the different elements that made up the dovecote, but concludes that no regional or chronological pattern could be found. Rather it was a question of personal choice.

McCann’s style can be rather strident and dismissive of past interpretations. He is at his most dogmatic in his defence of this particular type of building, when he states – whilst briefly discussing residential conversions – ‘There is no justification for destroying any more dovecotes in Wiltshire by converting them to dwellings’ (p.161), a sentiment with which, having read this book, we may well agree.