Bruton Dovecote - Added to National Trust in South West

I have just added this to the map of places to fly your drone at Drone Scene:

Land owner permission not required.

Parking/TOAL: 51.107361, -2.453377

Managed by the National Trust, but there the Bruton Football Club carpark is free to park and makes a good TOAL (outside of the NT boundary).

A historic 16th-century dovecote and watchtower high above the town of Bruton, situated on the Leland walking trail. Managed by the Stourhead Estate (National Trust).

No one knows for certain when the dovecote was built, but it may have served as a watchtower for nearby Bruton Abbey as well as supplying the monks with food. The interior has 200 nesting boxes for pigeons, which gives rise to its alternative name 'The Pigeon Tower'.

The dovecote is made of local stone dressed with stronger Doulton stone. It is square in plan, standing three storeys high, though all the interior flooring and the roof have disappeared. There are gables on all four sides and an arched doorway on the north-east face.

You can see the remains of a fireplace inside - very unusual if it was only a dovecote, for the pigeons wouldn't need a fire! The most likely explanation is that there was a late medieval building here and it was later converted into a dovecote, possibly by the Berkeley family who bought Bruton Abbey after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Evidence for use as a watchtower is scanty; an 18th-century sketch shows the dovecote with a chimney on the roof, so it was definitely used for some kind of habitation.

The originator declared that this location was not inside a Flight Restriction Zone at the time of being flown on 19/02/2023. It remains the responsibility of any pilot to check for any changes before flying at the same location.