Westquarter Dovecote Statement of Significance

Property in Care (PIC) ID: PIC166 Designations: Listed Building (LB8315) Taken into State care: 1950 (Guardianship) Last Reviewed: 2019 STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE WESTQUARTER DOVECOT We continually revise our Statements of Significance, so they may vary in length, format and level of detail. While every effort is made to keep them up to date, they should not be considered a definitive or final assessment of our properties. Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office: Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH © Historic Environment Scotland 2019 You may re-use this information (excluding logos and images) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open- government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. Any enquiries regarding this document should be sent to us at: Historic Environment Scotland Longmore House Salisbury Place Edinburgh EH9 1SH +44 (0) 131 668 8600 www.historicenvironment.scot Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office: Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT SCOTLAND STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE WESTQUARTER DOVECOT CONTENTS 1 Summary 2 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 Statement of significance 2 2 Assessment of values 3 2.1 Background 3 2.2 Evidential values 4 2.3 Historical values 5 2.4 Architectural and artistic values 8 2.5 Landscape and aesthetic values 8 2.6 Natural heritage values 9 2.7 Contemporary/use values 9 3 Major gaps in understanding 9 4 Associated properties 10 5 Keywords 10 Bibliography 10 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Timeline 12 Appendix 2: General History of Doocots 13 Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office: Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH 1 1 Summary 1.1 Introduction Westquarter Dovecot is located on the south side of Dovecot Road, Falkirk, just to the east of the junction with Westquarter Avenue. It is a traditional sandstone ‘lectern’ doocot with unusually decorative wallhead parapet details, probably dating from the early 18th century. The doocot incorporates an earlier armorial panel of 1647 over the doorway. The structure was scheduled on 14 February 1948, taken into State care in 1950, category-A listed on 25 October 1972 and de-scheduled (to remove a dual designation) on 3 November 2017. Free public access to the exterior of the building is available throughout the year. The short access path is wheelchair accessible, but there is a step up into the doocot. The interior is not generally open to the public. As the site is not staffed, it is not possible to establish visitor numbers. Since the site is located in a residential area, many people will pass by the doocot and it is something of a landmark. 1.2 Statement of significance Westquarter Dovecot is a very well-preserved example of an ornate early 18th-century ‘lectern’ doocot, containing 868 nesting boxes. It was originally part of the estate of the Livingstone family at Westquarter House, though the main house is long-demolished and it is now set in an estate of Arts-and- Crafts-style housing, begun 1934. The significance of Westquarter Dovecot lies primarily in its architectural, aesthetic and historic values: • It is a largely complete and well-preserved example of a specialised building type which helps tell the story of food provision and social status in the 18th and 19th centuries. • Architecturally, while lectern doocots are the most numerous type in Scotland, the parapet detailing and general level of finish is quite sophisticated. • These architectural qualities, and the quality and care taken in its construction, give the doocot considerable aesthetic appeal which compliments the surrounding Arts and Crafts housing estate. • In its local context, it is a tangible link to the earlier history of the place, particularly in the re-use of the armorial panel, and is a local landmark. • Potentially, the doocot could be a bat-roost – this has to be established. Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office: Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH 2 While the doocot in itself is well preserved, it has lost its original historic setting. Against this, its retention within the notable Arts and Crafts housing scheme seems appropriate to the guiding aesthetic of that movement. A fuller description of the site and assessment of values is given in the following paragraphs. 2 Assessment of values 2.1 Background Note on nomenclature: 1. Westquarter: In historical documents the estate is sometimes referred to as ‘Westquarter’, ‘West Quarter’, ‘Edinbellie’, ‘Edinbelly’, ‘Ederbelly’. The modern name ‘Westquarter’ is used throughout this document. 2. Dovecot/Doocot: there are many different spellings of “doocot” in old Scots, contemporary Scots and English (see Appendix 2). The property is named Westquarter Dovecot in legal deeds, and its address is Dovecot Road. However, the Scots term doocot is used throughout this document when referring generally to this type of structure. Freestanding doocots, such as Westquarter, are recognised as a specific and characterful building type associated with Scottish estates from the 16th to the 19th centuries. A detailed introduction to the practice of keeping pigeons and an overview of doocots in Scotland is given at Appendix 2. Westquarter Dovecot is designed with a ‘lean-to’ roof in the form of a reading lectern that gives this doocot type its name. It is built of rubble sandstone with dressed quoins and door rybats (surrounds). The ground-plan is rectangular, 5.56m east to west by 4.95m north to south. The walls are 0.86m thick. All the main features, including the doorway, heraldic panel, moulded stone ledge, flight holes, crowstepped lean-to roof and decorative scooped parapet, face south and the design is symmetrical along an axis through the middle of the doorway. Three stone flight holes are located at the first stage above the doorway and the armorial panel. The lean-to gable walls are crowstepped with ‘beaked’ skewputts at the base, and a curvilinear parapet at the top. There are two panelled pedestals with dumpy obelisk finials at the lower level of the parapet, and four ball-finials along the scooped back wall. A rounded perching course runs all the way around the building. The door is constructed of boarded timber. The roof is of slate in two tiers separated by a vertically-boarded panel containing six timber flight holes. The lower tier of roofing contains a skylight and there is a cast-iron gutter and downpipe. Above the door is a carved armorial panel, which is described in some detail in the RCAHMS Inventory: Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office: Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH 3 The panel above the door bears, on a slightly sunk field, a shield enclosed by a line which probably represents a bordure and charged: Quarterly, 1st and 4th, three cinquefoils, two and one, within a tressure; 2nd and 3rd, a bend between six billets. Above the shield appear the letters S/D, and separated by it are the initials WL/HL; taken together these stand for Sir William Livingstone of Westquarter and his wife Dame Helenore Livingstone, whom he married in 1626. The arms are those registered as of Livingstone of Westquarter, and may either have been evolved from Livingstone's paternal arms, with a bordure for difference, or have been those of Dame Helenore, the heiress of Westquarter, and borne by Livingstone jure uxoris. Below the shield is the date 1647.1 Internally the walls are lined with regular rows of nesting boxes, 0.23m in height, 0.20m wide and 0.46m deep. There are 868 boxes in total. The floor is of brick. A circular socket marks the location of a potence (revolving timber ladder mechanism, now missing) in the centre of the floor. The doocot is set in a small grassed enclosure surrounded by a low post-and- wire fence and a hedge. The tall back of the doocot faces Dovecot Road. Access to the doocot is via a short path from the south. There are additional areas of grass surrounding the enclosure (outside the property boundary). Looking southwards from Dovecot Road towards the doocot, there is a view across the neighbouring supermarket site and Redding Road to an open field beside the railway. On stylistic and detailing grounds, the doocot appears to have been constructed in the early 18th century. It is very similar in size and form to the doocot at Drumquhassle, Drymen, dated 1711.2 There was certainly a doocot in place at Westquarter by 1724, when the estate was advertised for sale (see Historical Values below). The armorial panel of 1647 is likely to have been added to the doocot at a later date, possibly when the 17th-century mansionhouse was demolished in 1883 and a number of other 17th-century carved stones were salvaged for re-use on the replacement house. 2.2 Evidential values Westquarter is important for its survival as a remarkably complete doocot of the early 18th century: the timber potence3 is the only major missing feature. The doocot provides insight into the methods of pigeon farming and the culinary and social culture of the period. The original siting of the doocot at some distance from the main house, but close to the service offices and the walled garden, demonstrates the concerns for the tranquillity, security and maintenance of the birds, and the ease of transport of the dung as fertiliser for the garden.

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