WE'VE been on a flight of fancy chronicling the area's dovecotes recently, and now, thanks to Ian Hillary, from Hurworth, we're able to link the wife who survived Henry VIII with a North Yorkshire pigeon pie. Now lockdown has eased, Ian has been out into North Yorkshire to check on some dovecotes which we haven’t yet mentioned in our tour of these curious structures. Dovecotes, of course, were important in the days before refrigerators as they proved a fresh source of eggs and meat. They became fashionable accessories to a country estate around 1700, although the older, more rustic, Durham ones are centuries older than that. Most of the building of dovecotes in our area was done by 1800.