At Bolton in County Kildare, a dovecote sits beside an old tower house, and the two structures together tell a quiet story of adaptation across several centuries. The dovecote, known more formally as a columbarium, is barrel-vaulted in stone and was used to house pigeons, providing a reliable source of fresh meat and eggs for the household through the winter months when other provisions ran low. Above it, a later pigeon loft was added, suggesting the building remained in practical use well after its original construction.

The tower house itself dates to the fifteenth century, rectangular in plan with a square projecting turret at the south-east corner. Tower houses of this period were the dominant form of defended domestic architecture across much of Ireland, built by local lords and landowners as much for status as for security. By the eighteenth century, the tower had been absorbed into a double-gabled house, a common fate for such structures as their owners sought more comfortable living arrangements without entirely abandoning the older fabric. The dovecote immediately to the south is thought to be a modified bawn turret, the bawn being the walled enclosure that typically surrounded an Irish tower house for the protection of livestock and household. Repurposing a corner of that defensive perimeter as a columbarium would have been a practical decision, making use of solid existing stonework while serving a wholly domestic need.