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This is the story of the refurbishment of Crail's 16th Century Doocot. In it we trace every step of the project starting with the archeological dig.
But first, a bit of background.
Crail Doocot was built in the 16th century, on ground owned by the priory in Haddington, to house rock doves which were bred to provide eggs and fresh meat. At that time it was not possible to keep large numbers of cattle or sheep over the winter months because of lack of feeding, so in the autumn, only a few animals were kept for breeding the following year while the rest were slaughtered and their meat salted for consumption over the winter. So the doocot was an extremely important source of fresh meat and was therefore a very prestigious building. When root vegetables arrived in Britain, they could be used for winter feed for animals, so no doocots were built after the 18th century.
This is one of the few remaining “beehive” doocots still standing (so named because of its conical shape) and is one of the oldest buildings in Crail. Its condition has gradually deteriorated over the years and when it was bequeathed to the Crail Preservation Society (CPS) in 1962 it was in urgent need of restoration, the lime harling was absent over large areas and the nest boxes were starting to deteriorate.
CPS organised a restoration programme, and the old lime harling was removed and replaced with cement based harling, which at the time, was considered to be beneficial. However, we now know that this process merely exacerbated the damp problem, the cement mortar trapping the moisture in the sandstone, and the problem was further compounded by rainwater entering the building through a hole in the capstone and penetrating damp affecting the north wall from earth heaped up against it over the years. By the end of the 20th century, the doocot was in a sorry state. Although superficially it looked to be in good repair from the outside, the interior told a different story.
The banks of nestboxes were soaking and some of them had collapsed. The mud floor and uneven access path were slippery to walk on so public access was denied except on “Open Doors” days once a year when supervised access was permitted. Being one of the earliest doocots in Scotland it was by now Category A listed and after much consideration CPS decided that a major restoration programme should be undertaken.
Architects Simpson and Brown carried out a full survey of the building and prepared a summary of proposed works which was distributed to various contractors for estimates. Once the cost of refurbishment was known, the process of fundraising began.
Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Environment Scotland both provided major grants and CPS raised a significant sum from its own savings and by organising a major raffle, a concert, wine and cheese evenings and coffee mornings. By the end of May 2017 sufficient funds had been raised to allow work to start so a preliminary archaeological survey was undertaken to prepare for a full archaeological dig on 1st June 2017.
The dig was supervised by Addyman Archaeology from Edinburgh, ably assisted by Jo Hambly and Tom Dawson, two locally based archaeologists who kindly volunteered their services.
Also attending that day was Laure Emery who undertook the task of researching the history of the doocot, and her conclusions can be found on this website (under construction).
They were joined by over 70 children from Crail Primary School who attended in small groups and were given a short tour of the doocot prior to participating in the dig.
They set about their task with enormous enthusiasm, finding lots of “treasures”including pieces of medieval and later pottery, old bottles, marbles, metalwork, pigeon bones and clay pipes.
The children obviously enjoyed their day and it was gratifying to see that many of them brought their parents to the dig over the weekend to continue their investigations.
The work continued over the next three days and several volunteers, both residents and tourists, helped with the dig. The topsoil on the north side of the doocot was removed and revealed that the bedrock had been levelled prior to the building of the doocot and a drainage trench had been excavated two feet back from the wall of the doocot which was found to continue round both sides of the building, presumably for drainage during construction. It is of interest that in their plans for the restoration of the doocot, our architects have included a drainage channel in exactly the same position!
The other interesting find was a circular hole cut into the rock in the centre of the floor which is almost certainly the foundation for a potence ladder – a rotating ladder from which chicks and eggs could be collected. Doubts had been expressed about whether the Priory Doocot ever had such a ladder but this finding appears to prove that it did.
On Monday 22nd July the restoration work began. The soil lying against the north aspect of the building was removed and the rock excavated down to the level of the adjacent path.
Scaffolding was erected and the stonemasons removed the old harling.
Northmuir, the lime harling specialists, then pointed the stonework with lime mortar and after a further week sprayed the structure with a thin layer of lime harling.
Finally, the potence ladder can be put together
Credits:
Photos by Sandy Young