ENGLISH DOVECOTE 



dition to the number of our English dovecotes, 

 many being built; but restrictions still existed 

 till much later times. In 1577, for example, a 

 tenant who had erected a dovecote on a royal 

 manor was ordered by the Courtof Exchequer 

 to demolish it. Ten years later, in another case 

 of the same kind, it was still held that none save 

 the lord of the manor might build a dovecote; 

 but two out of the three judges decided that 

 there was no ground for prosecution before the 

 Manor Court, the great man's only remedy 

 being a civil action. This decision seems to 

 have been reaffirmed in the days of James I., 

 the lord of the manor's sole right to a dovecote 

 being still expressly upheld. The law upon the 

 point appears to have been still unchanged as 

 late as the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. 



The dovecote introduced into this country 

 by the Norman conquerors was of one univer- 

 sal type; a circular and very massive building, 

 having walls three feet or even more in thick- 

 ness, and a low-domed vaulted roof. This last 

 was, at first, most often open in the centre, a 

 round hole admitting not the pigeons only, but 



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