Traditional Dovecotes Work Like This 🕊️ | Eugenio Monesma Documentaries

Called dovecotes, columbariams, culveries, and doocots in Scotland, dovecotes were used to farm doves or pigeons, once an important source of food. England alone had over 26,000 of the structures in the seventeenth century. Built to house between two and five hundred birds. The young pigeons, or squabs, were generally fated for the dining room table since their meat was tender, while the adult birds’ meat was considered tough and unappetizing, though some sources suggest adult pigeons were eaten

Dovecotes were built by wealthy people to supply themselves and their households with a luxurious food, the tender meat of young pigeons. A pair of dovecote pigeons produced a clutch of two eggs, which they incubated for seventeen days. Later they were eaten after being fattened. These squabs whose wings were clipped were almost as large as the parent birds, as their flying muscles had never been used; consequently their meat was very tender, and was much prized as a delicacy. Squabs could be ro

Hadrian's Wall. A remnant of the Roman Empire buried for preservation by Dovecote Bridge near Walton in Cumbria, England. | International Man of History