BOOK OF DOVECOTES 



Staunton, who died in 1288, "held a capital 

 messuage and garden, a dovecot, three water- 

 mills, two groves of eight acres in all, ten acres 

 of meadow, and 216 acres of arable land." 



We have it on the authority of the Evesham 

 Chronicles that Abbot Randulph, whose ten- 

 ure of office dated from 1214 to 1229, brought 

 about, among other improvements on his lands, 

 the erection of dovecotes at Offenham, Ham- 

 stone, Wickhampton,and Ombresley. At Off- 

 enham there still is, attached to bther build- 

 ings, a very small dovecote, nine feet by ten; it 

 is much out of repair, the timber framing being 

 filled in with mixed brick and lath and plaster. 

 But this was certainly not that which Abbot 

 Randulph built; and the same may be said of 

 the far more attractive specimen at Hawford, 

 Ombresley, built upon a stone foundation, 

 seventeen feet square, four-gabled, and with 

 an open lajitern in the roof The lower part has 

 been converted to the purpose of a coach-house, 

 and nest-holes remain on two sides only of the 

 upper floor. To the dilapidated dovecote at 

 Oddingley, still containing six hundred nests, 

 is attached the sinister story of its having form- 

 92 



