Why do a love you like a doo?

(Ancient music-hall joke!)

This dovecote was built at the end of the 16th century - and like most of them was attached to a castle so that the feathered friends could produce flesh, eggs and dung. This one can hold 1000 nests!

Strangely enough you had to be someone to be allowed to keep doves. An ancient privilege known as droit de colombier meant that only the aristocracy could enjoy what these birds had to offer. You had to be the owner of land that could produce "ten chalders of grain" to be allowed to have a dovecote.

This particular example is in Corstorphine in Edinburgh. Panicking about a blip, I was at PC World to buy software and thinking "must blip!" On the way back saw a sign pointing to this - so straight from the temples of the 21st century, to the statelier and less frenzied days of the 16th. (Unless, of course, you were a pigeon destined for the pot!)