CHAPTER SIX 



WORCESTER AND 



WARWICK 



In the number, interest, and beauty of its dove- 

 cotes the county of Worcester may be fitly 

 grouped with the two already described. With 

 Herefordshire, especially, it presents many 

 interesting parallels. Statistics of Hereford- 

 shire dovecotes, compiled some thirty years 

 ago, showed the total number then existing to 

 be seventy-four, while more than thirty had 

 been demolished or allowed to go to ruin. In 

 Worcestershire there were, fifteen years later, 

 ninety-three dovecotes, while twenty others, 

 known to have existed formerly, had disap- 

 peared. In one point Worcestershire falls very 

 far behind the sister county; as compared 

 with Herefordshire's twenty-one octagonal ex- 

 amples, she has only one to show. 



Of circular dovecotes Worcestershire has 

 none of an age certainly equal to, far less ex- 

 ceeding, that at Garway; but she possesses one 

 of greater size. This, the largest in the county, 

 stands in a field at South Littleton, and is no 

 less than eighty-three feet in circumference. 



83 



