A Royal Nod to Chickens

An Engraving of Queen Victoria's Poultry House at Home Park, Windsor (1854)

It's not just celebrities who have a fascination with chickens. Throughout history, royalty has been smitten with chickens as well. Just take a gander at Queen Victoria's royal chicken abode. Pretty nice digs for poultry plumage! 

And, it seems like the Brits are still rousing up the history of chickens--ever since chicken bones were discovered in an Iron Age pot at West Deeping in Lincolnshire. It seems, according to an article in House and Home by Jonathon Foyle that "a research collaboration between Bournemouth and Nottingham Universities" called “The Chicken Coop” "will bring together anthropologists, archaeologists and even theologists to understand the ascent of chicken husbandry." 

Other royals have housed their chickens in grand palaces. At Versailles, there was the Royal Menagerie (1664) and a Russian aviary was built for Tsar Paul I. 

My coop on the top of my hill for my fifteen chickens is the more proletariat of the coop estates. But, with all of its avian wire and redwood panels, it seems to do the job just fine.