Dunster Dovecote

Like all historic buildings Dunster Dovecote has been altered and repaired many times, but unlike many other dovecotes it has never been converted to a secondary use. There is no documentary evidence of its origin, but some of thecarpentry is characteristic of the fourteenth century - the arched doorframe made in three sections and two incomplete ring-beams on the wall-head.

At that period it belonged to the Benedictine Priory of Dunster, a cell of Bath Abbey. All Abbots and Priors were political appointments of the King; they were expected to entertain visiting officials on a lavish scale. Probably the Prior, his senior colleagues and the most important guests ate pigeons only at the high table. Henry VI11 dissolved the Priory in 1539 and the property was sold to the Luttrell family of Dunster Castle. In the eighteenth century major alterations were undertaken, the floor level raised, the wooden door frame was raised and the lower tiers of nest holes were blocked and plastered over to protect the new pigeon hazard, "brown rats" which were unknown in Britain before 1720 and spread to Somerset in the 1760s. Also in the eighteenth century a revolving ladder (often called a potence) was installed, allowing the pigeon keeper to search the nest-holes without having to move his ladder each time. This Dovecote has 501 nest holes, which penetrate about 0.40m into the wall, widening at the inner ends. The south window was constructed, which involved cutting away some nest-holes and the roof was rebuilt in the style of carpentry characteristic of that period.

In the early nineteenth century two feeding platforms were added to the axis of the revolving ladder, which were attached with hand made nails, whereas the rest of the structure is jointed and pegged. In August 1936 the dovecote was examined by the Rev Home of Downside, he described the revolving ladder, still in its eighteenth-century form. The axis had an iron pin at each end. Between then and 1952, whilst the dovecote was still in private ownership, the revolving ladder was comprehensively altered. The lower pivot was replaced with a modern conical bearing on a pin rising from the floor, the upper pivot was reset in a wooden block below the tie beam and a modern ladder was attached, reusing the earlier hand-threaded hook-bolts.

Changes in the law and farming practice had made it necessary to confine the pigeons to the dovecote at certain times of the year so at that period they were fed and watered inside.

When the Dunster Castle Estate was sold in 1952, the Dovecote was bought by the Dunster Parochial Church Council and was then opened to the public.
In 1989 substantial repairs were undertaken, under the auspices of Dunster P.C.C., aided by grants from Somerset County Council, Exmoor National Park Authority and English Heritage. The eighteenth-century roof was re-slated, fastened with oak wooden pegs as before and the Glover was repaired in the same form, but the weather- vane was created to a new design.

Contributed by: Helen Jenkins