Sandyhills Dovecote, Banff
Description: Sandyhills Dovecote
Category: B
Date Listed: 7 November 1985
Historic Scotland Building ID: 6661
OS Grid Coordinates: 368203, 863202
Latitude/Longitude: 57.6576, -2.5345
Location: 19 Doo'Cot Park, Banff, Aberdeenshire AB45 1FS
Locality: Banff
County: Aberdeenshire
Country: Scotland
Postcode: AB45 1FS
Incorrect location/postcode? Submit a correction!
Listing Text
Circa 1800. Hexagonal dovecote on hilltop site. Harl pointed rubble with crenellated tooled ashlar wallhead. Tall round-headed blind arcade at north with square-headed doorway. Pulvinated cornice immediately below wallhead; single ashlar weeper drainage spouts project from centre of cornice, surviving on most elevations, draining flat stone slab roof masked by crenellation. 2 rectangular openings house flight holes, formerly fronted by alighting ledges supported on iron brackets (brackets survive).
INTERIOR: each interior wall lined with nesting boxes, the transoms (horizontals) of slate; unusual central column housing 6 vertical rows of nesting boxes, similar to those built into interior walling.
Approximately 490 nesting boxes.
References:
Dovecote appears on John Clerk's topographical print of Banff, 1826.
Notes:
The Sandyhills dovecote stands on a hilltop above the Deveron valley and Duff House, as a folly and ornament to the landscape. The central column, providing 96 additional nesting boxes, is unusual; structually it supports the stone slab roof. Until the 1980s the dovecote stood in a field, now (1994) largely built over with modern residential development.
Source: Historic Scotland
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI Click-use licence number C2008002006.