RECENTLY the intrepid explorer, Kate Phillips, was offered a tour by Gary Tyley of the Cadoxton dovecote and gardens – she took this weeks photo.

The Cadoxton dovecote was built for purpose sometime or just before the 1200s and is one of very few surviving examples in the old Glamorgan, including a smaller monastic type building at Llantwit Major (still intact), and a derelict example; near original height but without corbelled roof at Monknash.

Our example at Cadoxton has been the subject of great debate between historians and archaeologists. Personally, I feel the only time that level of funds was available to build such a structure was in the 1200s or just before.

It is rare to see an image inside, so that is what we have used this week; and in black and white which gives it genre of its own. It is one of very few complete medieval buildings in the Barry and District.

You look up at the grade I Listed structure; very few buildings are graded I, and you know from Gladstone Road below (heading towards Cadoxton Conservative club), that this building is special.

The dovecote is privately owned, but there are occasional open days to view inside, so keep your eyes open for announcements. The dovecote is impressive at more than eight metres high. Internally the walls head up 4.6 metres before the spring of the dome heads in a general curve to the 'natural' light space at the apex.

There is plenty of space inside the dovecote: more than five metres across; lots of room for the chatter and hustle and bustle of the birds that once lived inside. The dovecote once held white doves, held for their meat, eggs, and to be slaughtered at harvest time for both meat and the grain they carried in their crops.

I'm informed, but have never counted them, that there was once up to 700 nesting boxes, the home for maybe up to 1,400 pairs of birds.

To access the eggs and birds there would have been a central wooden pole attached to a moveable stairway, which could be turned to face which ever level and side you needed the eggs. It's debatable whether 'natural' light space at the apex of the dome is contemporary, as this would have made the building very damp inside in the rain; with water flowing into the nesting boxes. There may have been some kind of hood above the 'natural' light. Most of the main; nesting boxes are rectangular and uniform in size, but many are also missing.

You enter through one entrance which acts as the exit also, a building mainly constructed of carboniferous limestone made of the rock it is perched upon.

The dovecote at Cadoxton Court is either associated with a monastery or a manor. The details of which individuals built the dovecote are lost in time for now. The area it sits in dominated land on all sides; the valley Gladstone Road sits in today is more recent - sat in a cwm quarried away the late Victorian and Edwardian period over 120 years ago.

More of our Barry and District next week.