BOOK OF DOVECOTES 



the central hole and outer edge, suggested the 

 former presence of some sort of lid. 



The walls were four feet thick. The door- 

 way, placed on the south-west, was approached 

 between wing walls, doubtless constructed to 

 prevent the earth from falling in. The nests, pro- 

 vided with alighting-ledges, varied consider- 

 ably in depth, the builders having been with- 

 out the guide of an even and well-defined face 

 upon the outer surface of the walls. 



It seems extremely difficult to account for 

 the dovecote being so built. A semi-subter- 

 ranean situation would surely have an effect 

 thereverse of beneficial on the health and com- 

 fort of the birds. True that the region was a 

 wild one in the days when it was built; wild 

 even later still, as Walter Savage Landor was 

 to find when he took up his quarters at the 

 Priory inn and set himself to plant the bare 

 hill-slopes with cedars and to build himself a 

 lordly pleasure-house. The dwellers in that 

 lonely district looked askance upon him, high 

 and low alike; pulled up his cedar saplings, 

 quarrelled with him, would not pay their rents 

 or make him justice of the peace. The house 

 198 



