What are those holes?

It’s one of the questions we get asked most frequently, and the simple answer is that they’re nesting holes.

But the question is why?

When the house was built, probably around the mid 1800s, having bird nesting holes was a symbol of status and wealth. Our house, normally described as a maison de maître, or master’s house, would have been built for people important to the village, and to make that clear they included these nesting holes.

Nesting holes were one example of this display of status, but there was another, the pigeonnier or dovecote — a tower designed to keep and breed pigeons or doves. Although they were in themselves a status symbol, they were generally designed to allow for the collection of droppings as a rich fertiliser. This was indication that the owner was also a land owner. Below is a photo taken in 1908 that shows the original dovecote that would have stood in what is now our driveway.

The dovecote vanished a long time ago, along with other structural changes that modernised the usage of the house. The nesting holes remain though, and the little birds still love them.

I love having them live just around the corner.