The battlements are a later addition, applied in the nineteenth century to a structure that predates them by roughly two hundred years, giving the building an oddly layered appearance, dressed up in the architectural fashions of one era while belonging, at its core, to quite another. Inside, the nesting boxes remain visible, the defining feature that identifies this as a dovecote, a purpose-built structure for housing doves or pigeons, which were kept in post-medieval households as a reliable source of fresh meat and eggs through the winter months.

The dovecote is thought to date from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, placing its origins in the same period as an earlier house on the estate, which was later absorbed into the present Castle Forbes house as it was expanded and remodelled across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That earlier structure and this small outbuilding are therefore roughly contemporary, survivors from the same phase of settlement on the demesne. The square plan, measuring approximately 4.8 metres on each side, is modest in scale, and the building would have sat within a working domestic landscape at a time when such structures were practical necessities rather than ornamental features.