Naunton Dovecote History
Naunton Dovecote origins
The manor of Naunton was owned by Little Malvern Priory from 1287 until Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, being sold to John Dale, the tenant, in 1544. It changed hands several times after that and was inherited by John Collett in 1642.
The Manor Farm and Manor House, a large 17th century farmhouse possibly built by Collett, were bought in 1857 by William Hanks (d1871), who almost totally rebuilt the house shortly afterwards. Although the size of the farm at that time is not known, it was described as having 545 acres in 1932 when William’s great grandson Geoffrey Hanks began to take over the running of the farm from his father. The farmyard lay immediately to the west of the house and comprised a 17th century granary, other barns and the Dovecote. The farm was reduced in size gradually over the years, particularly after Geoffrey’s retirement from farming in 1984, and the house sold with just 8 acres in 2007 following Geoffrey’s death.
Geoffrey failed to obtain planning consent in the late 1980s for a proposed development of four houses on Dovecote bank, traditionally used for grazing with the land immediately beside the Dovecote. Objections were made by Nicholas Ridley, a near neighbour and at the time Secretary of State for the Environment, popularising the term Nimby, “not in my back yard”. The land was sold in the 1990s for agricultural purposes.
In 1997 a planning application was submitted for the conversion of the Dovecote and neighbouring outbuildings into Bed and Breakfast accommodation. Following strong local opposition to the proposal, the application was withdrawn the following year. Geoffrey sold the buildings in 1999 to his daughter who, later that year, sold the Dovecote, the former stable block, a 1960s tractor shed, a derelict turbine house, the sluice across the River Windrush, and surrounding land to what is now the Naunton Dovecote Trust.
The Dovecote
The ownership of a dovecote was a privilege restricted to lords of the manor and parish priests from the 12th century to 1619, with any freeholder being entitled to build a dovecote on his own land after that. A dovecote was considered to be a visible expression of high economic status related to a luxurious diet. The Naunton Dovecote is relatively large, based on the number of nest-holes, indicating it was associated with somebody of importance in the county, controlling a large area of land.
A dovecote’s function was to house dovecote pigeons, as opposed to wood or street pigeons, to exploit their natural behaviour as domestic descendants of rock doves, breeding up to eight times a year with the main breeding season being between April and October. The squabs, young pigeons, were killed when about four weeks old, providing very tender meat. Traditionally the dung was collected for use as manure, a valuable byproduct, and for industrial purposes in the tanning and gunpowder industries. At the end of the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries, wheat prices rose considerably and remained high as a result of the Napoleonic Wars and Corn Laws. Pigeons were then considered wasteful, consuming more grain than their value as meat justified. All historic dovecotes passed out of normal economic use in the 19th century, many being demolished and others converted to alternative uses.
The age of the Naunton Dovecote is unclear. English Heritage listed the building in 1960. The Grade II* listing, recognising the building as being of special architectural and historical importance, refers to “Excellent dovecote. Probably C16, possibly earlier”. A report in 1998 by John McCann, a historic buildings consultant and dovecote specialist, suggested that a freestanding square building with a four gabled roof such as this is typical of the first half of the 17th century, the construction possibly coinciding with John Collett’s acquisition of the manor in 1642.
Compared with other dovecotes of the same period this one has survived in exceptionally unaltered condition as a result of its conversion to a mill and store, possibly after the Manor was bought in 1857 and certainly before 1882, helped by its unusual location on the floor of a wide valley close to the River Windrush, dovecotes usually being set on high sites. A new, larger, entrance was formed in the south elevation of the Dovecote, the original small entrance on the east elevation, facing the Manor House to help to control access, being blocked leaving a small window, using much of the stone removed for the new opening. On the north elevation a loading hatch was introduced to give access for grain and flour to be carried in to and out of the mill, there being a non-original timber loft floor in situ in 1938 about 8’ above ground, but subsequently removed.
Otherwise the building remains largely as constructed being 24’ square with the height to ridge level of 30’, a roof of Cotswold stone slates and 3’ thick Cotswold stone walls, a two-light window with a central stone mullion in each gable, an external perching ledge about 9’ to 11’ above ground almost totally surrounding the building and a narrower perching ledge across each gable above the windows. A square timber frame louvered “glover” above the meeting of the roof ridges, the highest point of the building providing safe entry and exit for pigeons by enabling them to see any approaching birds of prey, is capped with a stone ball finial.
The four-gabled roof was considered to be an ingenious design, giving pigeons eight inclined surfaces on which to perch ensuring some would face the sun at all times of day as well as creating pockets of shelter from winds.
Internally, there are a series of alighting ledges with tiers of L-shaped nest-holes. The lower five tiers have been blocked, this probably having been carried out between 1740 – 1760 in response to the spread to this area of brown rats. There are now 903 open nest-holes, reduced from approximately 1,200 originally. Traces of lime-wash, thought to reduce insect infestation and the whiteness to attract pigeons, remain in many places, most consistently on the lower walls up to the first alighting ledge. The concrete floor may have been laid on bare earth when the building was used during the Second World War for keeping chickens.
The Dovecote was described as becoming dilapidated in 1929 and, in 1938, the roof was referred to as being in disrepair with roof timbers exposed and the slates in need of being removed completely and relaid. Restoration work was undertaken by Bert Bayliss, a local builder, in 1949 with the benefit of a grant from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings but in 1997, when Geoffrey Hanks was considering the building’s conversion and sale, there was concern with the condition of the stone slate roof covering and decay in the timber roof structure.
Following the acquisition of the building in 1999, an initial phase of extensive repair and restoration work was undertaken, organised by Andrew Townsend Architects with Pyments of Campden as contractors. This included the introduction of two steel beams to support the main ridge and steel hangers to carry the weight of the upper purlins designed by structural engineer Keith Banfield.
A number of the timber rafters were provided with additional timber supports and the roof totally recovered with stone slates, with a new louver, together with other repairs. The work was completed in 2001.
As part of the second phase of restoration in 2017/2018, organised again by Andrew Townsend Architects assisted by Clive Hudson Associates, consulting structural engineers, with PG Hawkins the contractors, further repairs and routine maintenance were carried out to the building, including replacing missing and broken roof slates, repairs to stonework at roof level and the timber louver, replacing the ball finial and additional pointing.
A 360 degree video tour inside the Dovecote (2018) is available courtesy of David Hanks. Click the link and once on the site, click the START button. You can also zoom in/out and examine the nestholes or look up at the underside of the roof using a touch screen, trackpad etc.
The Lean-to
The Ordnance Survey map of 1884, reflecting a survey undertaken in 1882/3, shows an extension on the south side of the Dovecote together with a leat, a man-made watercourse, of approximately 65 yards from the Windrush into the west end of the lean-to and a tailrace from the south east corner of the lean-to carrying water away back to the river. It is possible that the lean-to, of Cotswold stone with a Welsh slate roof, was built as part of the conversion of the Dovecote to a mill and store after the Manor changed hands in 1857, and before 1882. A photograph of 1949 shows the building with some rafters but without a roof covering. It is understood that the roof was removed in 1956 to enable the removal of the waterwheel, probably made of iron, for sale as scrap, and replaced with a shallower pitched roof of corrugated asbestos cement sheets.
There is no visible evidence of the waterwheel or the machinery surviving in the lean-to or in the Dovecote. Test pits dug externally in 2015 showed the south wall of the lean-to extending downwards by about 3’ below ground level, but no relevant information was revealed when a very limited excavation in the lean-to was carried out in 2018. A small area of engineering brick paving was exposed. Earlier illustrations show an opening, since blocked, towards the west end of the south wall of the lean-to, probably providing access to the outer end of the wheel shaft to enable lubrication. A blocked opening in the Dovecote wall, just above ground level, possibly contained a wall box for a shaft bearing.
Martin Watts, a mills consultant, has advised it is likely that the wheel pit ran along the inside of the south wall, with a waterwheel of about 10’ in diameter. In 2017/18 excavations of the headrace channel, by the lean-to, revealed a horseshoe shape to the end of the leat and a comparatively small opening through the wall, implying that the waterwheel would have been relatively low powered capable of driving only a single pair of millstones, which may have been located in the south west corner of the Dovecote. It is believed that the installation was used for milling animal feed rather than flour for human consumption until the 1930s when the water flow from the river decreased.
Repairs undertaken as part of the 2017/18 contract to remedy the poor condition of the building involved the introduction of mass concrete trench footing adjacent to the south wall for about 10’ from the south west corner to inhibit outward rotation of the below-ground walling, the rebuilding of the outer face of the south wall near the south west corner, and the installation of two steel restraint straps on the south west corner. As part of the same contract the timber roof structure and asbestos cement roofing sheets, considered a health and safety risk, were removed and replaced with a new timber roof structure with Welsh slate coverings to correspond with the earlier steeper pitch and finish.
The Sluice
A sluice shown on the 1884 Ordnance Survey map may have been formed at the same time as, or later than, the conversion of the Dovecote to a mill to hold back the river flow and increase the pressure of water through the Dovecote mill race. It is anticipated that the existing sluice was provided at the same time as the construction of the Turbine House, immediately to the north of the sluice.
Angled ashlar stone walls reduce the width of the river to almost 5’ downstream of the sluice gate, the stone walls splaying out on both sides of the river, their heads being angled downwards and capped with industrial bricks. The sluice gate was mended and altered in 2014/15 and the walls repaired in 2017/18.
During river clearance in 2018 large stones protecting a length of the north bank of the river downstream from the sluice were revealed. From illustrations from the 1930s, these were installed after the Turbine House was built. See the Veronica Burleigh painting at the top of the page.
The Outbuildings
The building to the east of the Dovecote was possibly erected before the 1920s as a pig-sty, being converted for cattle in 1947/48 and later becoming a stables. The external appearance of the building reflects changes made to the windows when it was used as a set for the BBC adaptation of Adam Bede in 1991/92.
In 2007 it was converted to create storage for rent to local residents and for village use, with the external walls being repaired and rendered in 2010. The 1960s Bradstone tractor shed was demolished in 2009.
The Turbine House
The Turbine House, built beside the sluice with Cotswold stone walls and a Cotswold stone slate roof, was constructed sometime after 1926 and before 1929 when it was in operation, there being a reference to vibration from it in a letter of that date. It provided a faltering electricity supply to the Manor, the Black Horse, Longford (another Hanks family home beside the pub), and one other house. By 1936/37 the water pressure was too low to reliably generate electricity, although it was not possible to prove a theory that this was as a result of water extraction upstream of Naunton. With mains electricity becoming available in the village with effect from 1948, the building was abandoned in the 1950s and fell into disrepair.The leat upstream of the building was infilled at some stage.
In 2010 work was undertaken to establish whether the turbine was still in place by digging out the leat (setting aside a number of stones that had been used to infill it), demonstrating that the mechanism was still in position, and then removing part of the reinforced concrete floor slab of the Turbine House to enable the mechanism to be extracted. The turbine is an inward flow Francis-type reaction turbine with a fixed casing with 12 adjustable guide vanes, and a horizontal rotor, with 11 curved vanes, and vertical shaft. The manufacturer of the turbine machinery and exact model have yet to be identified.
As part of the 2017/18 building contract further, limited, excavation to both the headrace and tailrace channels, which carried water for the turbine from and to the river, revealed a concrete and stone wall on the river side of the headrace and stone wall on the north side. Some repair and restoration to the walls was undertaken and the channels left exposed, but with dams at the junctions with the river to reduce water ingress into the Turbine House. During this contract extensive repairs to the walls of the Turbine House were undertaken and the walls capped with turf as, with all the roof timbers and stone slates missing, the decision was taken not to replace the roof.
The turbine machinery, having been shot blasted and sprayed with protective paint, was reinstated in its original position in the Turbine House. Only the fixed casing with adjustable guide vanes is therefore visible, the rotor being relocated in a pit underneath. On a timber batten on the north wall of the interior of the Turbine House are the remains of electric cables and porcelain insulators with, on the external face of this wall, metal fittings for securing electric cables which were carried to a post on the north west corner of the Dovecote. Although the post has been removed, fixings for it remain on the Dovecote. Please also see the images of the turbine in situ, on the home page.
Funding
The purchase and initial phase of the restoration of the building were made possible by grants from English Heritage and Cotswold District Council and very generous donations from local trusts and individuals, with considerable effort by a number of Naunton residents. Additional funds raised for the second phase of the restoration included a grant from the Pilgrim Trust with further generous support from local trusts and individuals.
The Future
It is hoped to commission a working model of the turbine to be put on public display on the site.
Planning consent was obtained in 2016 for the conversion of part of one of the stores into a WC and kitchen, to make it easier to use the Dovecote for village events. Detailed preparatory work is being undertaken.
Acknowledgements
While there is limited information available about the Dovecote site and the buildings on it, the following have been helpful sources,
Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, Volume 6, 1965
The Conservation of Historic Dovecotes, John McCann, Journal of Architectural Conservation, 1995
The Dovecote at Naunton, Gloucestershire, John McCann, 1998
Naunton 2000, David Hanks, 2004
Andrew Townsend Architects
Reports on the Turbine House, Dovecote and Mill, Martin Watts, 2015 & 2017