Moontan Bikers Doocot's "Bourhouse" Traditional Cache

Moontan Biker's doocot "Bourhouse"

I have a real love of the doocot, as a young bairn I used to play inside this on here at Bourhouse with my friend who lived in the mansion house & the doocot being part of his garden, we used to scramble around on the stone nest boxes playing off the ground tig !

From then I have always had a fascination with doocots, their architecture & how ther differ from one another. Here in East Lothian we are fortunate to have loads of them & although many look similar, they all differ slightly. Doocots were an important part of estate life in their day, the meat from the pigeons themselves, their eggs & the dropping were used to fertilise the fields & also used for tanning leather.

Over the coming months I intend to place a series of caches around the local doocots.

Bourhouse doocot is a double lectern style doocot, the random rubble walls, with a single encircling stringcoarse, are extensively harled on the back & lower gables. A low parapet with 3 capped finials crowns the north wall, from where falls the steeply pitched roof flanked by regular crowsteps capping the outer gables & centre party walls.

The roof is bisected by a continuous row of 34 flight holes pierced in paired (rotting) horizontal timber facings.

At some stage a low ceiling was inserted to convert part of the building into a cart shed or gig-house, although in the right hand chamber at least this ceiling has now gone. As part of the conversion, wider arched doorways replaced the originals. There is a rectangular air vent above each doorway & a pointed-head one in each gable, each fitted with a vertical bar, probably to prevent entry of birds of prey intent on harrying the pigeons.

There are thought to have originally been 1402 stone nest boxes. The lower rows were filled in during the conversion, and about 475 remain in the right hand chamber, the other not being accessable.