QR Veyre-Monton – Bourg 14
A cave dovecote
Two caves on the Monton site were converted into dovecotes. The largest, at the top of the staircase, had one hundred and eleven boulins (holes in which pigeons nested) carved into the rock.
The dovecote was located on the first floor. Part of the floor is made of rock. The central part must have been covered with a wooden floor held in place by joists fixed into notches in the wall. The floor separated the dovecote from a room on the ground floor.
Evenly-spaced notches in the ground floor wall and a rabbet suggest that a wooden staircase and a trap door were used to access the loft and collect the precious pigeon pellets, which were then used as fertiliser. The birds could enter the dovecote through an opening in the facade.