A dovecote near Leverington
Introduction
The photograph on this page of A dovecote near Leverington by Richard Humphrey as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
A dovecote near Leverington
Image: © Richard Humphrey Taken: 16 Oct 2009
The dovecote is at least 300 years old, (fn. 70) and is a fine specimen of its kind. It is an octagonal brick building with ingress through the top. Within was an octagonal wooden funnel, some 7 ft. long. This acted as a kind of decoy, for a bird flying down would find difficulty in making its way out, and by the time that it had done so would usually become accustomed to its surroundings and would remain of its own accord. Around the inside of the building are over 800 brickbuilt nests, arranged in tiers. Access to these was provided by a revolving ladder, which could be swung round in any direction to provide approach to every nest in the building. From: 'Wisbech Hundred: Leverington', A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 4: City of Ely; Ely, N. and S. Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds (2002), pp. 186-197. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=21916 Date accessed: 16 October 2009.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.673361
Longitude
0.13763