SMR 38 / NS 9654 7535
Projecting from the east end of the wall that divides the garden from the offices of Muiravonside House is a large doocot. After years of neglect and use as a garden shed it was restored in 1982 by a Manpower Services Commission project. It measures 19ft 3ins in breadth by 15ft 5ins in depth externally and is of the lectern type with a lean-to roof sloping up between flights of crow-steps to just in front of a high back wall to which it is connected by a short length of flat lead flashing. It is built of rubble with backset dressings. The recent renovation has hidden the alterations carried out to the entrance, reinstating the original. The back wall is, however, still breached by a mullioned window and a smaller shuttered window offset at a higher level. Entries for the birds are in two well-built stone fronted dormers which incorporate landing ledges. Each dormer houses six arched entrance holes, and a circular hole in the pediment. There is a string-course for perching at eaves level.
Only a small number of the original wooden nesting boxes survived intact. In form the doocot is seventeenth century, but its date of construction was considerably later. The home farm was moved from the area presently occupied by a car park to its present site in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and the present doocot belongs to this period. An earlier doocot is recorded in 1787 when Muiravonside House possessed :
“nine fire rooms, with a milk house, laundry, stables, coach-house, good garden, and dovecote (Edinburgh Evening Courant 12 April 1787 4).
Muiravonside Country Park is maintained by Falkirk Council who should be commended for their care of this monument. Listed B.
Bibliography
| Bailey, G.B | 1991 | ‘Doocots in the Falkirk District, Calatria 1, 33-56. |
| RCAHMS | 1963 | Stirlingshire: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments. Quoted below |
RCAHMS 1963 Stirlingshire: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments.
“Dovecot, Muiravonside House. Projecting from the E. end of the wall that divides the garden from the offices of Muiravonside House (No.316), there is a large dovecot now adapted as a garden store-house. It measures 19ft.3in. in breadth by 15ft.5in. in depth externally, is built of rubble with backset dressings and has a lean-to roof sloping up between flights of crow-steps to a high back-wall, entries for the birds arranged in the form of dormers and a string-course for perching at eaves level. Although it thus exemplifies a type which was in use from the 17th century onwards, it shows no features suggestive of a date before the earlier 19th century. The building has been considerably altered; in particular the original entrance has been built up and a larger one substituted beside it. 965753 NS97NE 18th March 1953” (p.397)
Falkirk Local History Society 