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Corstorphine Dovecot

Dovecot Road, Edinburgh
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Open all year round
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Visit a popular Edinburgh landmark – a dovecot of the 1500s, set in a pleasant leafy suburb.

Corstorphine Dovecot was built as part of the Corstorphine Castle estate. Dovecots, or doocots, were an important element of a landed estate. They housed pigeons in rows of nestboxes and the young birds, called squabs, were an important and reliable source of fresh meat.

Dovecots were also status buildings often designed as an eye-catching feature of the landscape around a great house.

Corstorphine Dovecot is a fairly typical dovecot of this period, in an excellent state of repair.

Large, circular stone structure with tiered levels in a manicured garden with a small green hedge and trees behind it
close up of the entrance to a stone building covered over with iron bars, with a small set of steps beside it
aerial view of a circular stone dovecote with a conical, tiered roof in a residential area surrounded by garden plots, greenhouses, and outbuildings. Two roads run across the image with a few parked cars.

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Membership

Ideal for regular visitors and heritage supporters

Unlimited annual pass for all ticketed sites plus daytime events

Two adults, holding hands with two young children, walk through a graveyard, with historical stone ruins in the background. It is a sunny day.
  • Unlimited annual pass for all ticketed sites plus daytime events
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Explorer Pass

Perfect for short-term trips and sightseeing

Valid for 14 consecutive days

A family walking across a grassy lawn with the New Abbey Corn Mill building in the background.
  • Valid for 14 consecutive days
  • Entry to all ticketed sites, including Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle and Urquhart Castle
  • 20% discount on audio guides at Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle and Glasgow Cathedral
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