Part 19 (2/2)

The north half of Room Y was filled with broken bricks, mortar, plaster, nails, and--significantly--small bits of charred wood and burned hornets' nests. The concentration of debris here could be explained by the collapse of the chimney as well as the interior wall into the room.

The crumbly condition of the southwest portion of the exterior-wall foundation also may indicate a wall collapse. Few artifacts were recovered in this area.

North of Room X lay a large amount of rubble and artifacts, suggesting that the north wall had fallen away from the building, perhaps carrying with it shelves of dishes and utensils. Both rooms contained ample evidence in the form of ash, charcoal, burned hornets' nests, and scorched flagstones to demonstrate that a fire of great heat had destroyed the building.

ARCHITECTURAL DATA AND INTERPRETATION

John Mercer's account with Thomas Barry (Ledger G) itemizes for 1749, ”building a Kitchen/ raising a Chimney/ building an oven.” It is clear from the features of Structure E, its relation to Structure B, and the custom prevalent in colonial Virginia of building separate dependencies for the preparation of food, that Structure E was the kitchen referred to in Barry's account. Like this building, kitchens elsewhere were almost invariably two rooms in plan--a cooking room and a pantry or storage room. One of the earliest--at Green Spring--had a large fireplace for the kitchen proper, and in the second room a smaller fireplace, both served by a central chimney. An oven stood inside the building between the larger fireplace and the wall.[157] At Stratford (ca. 1725) the kitchen is similarly planned, as it is at Mannsfield (Spotsylvania County).[158] Mount Vernon has an end chimney in its kitchen, and only one fireplace. The floor of the kitchen proper is paved with square bricks, while the second room has a clay floor. The Stratford kitchen is paved with ordinary bricks. Such examples can be multiplied several times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 48.--PAVED FLOOR OF ROOM X, Structure E, showing HL door hinge in foreground. (See fig. 88a.)]

The physical relations.h.i.+p of the kitchen to the main house in Virginia plantations was dictated in part by convenience and in part by the Palladian plans that governed the architecture of colonial mansions.

Structure E's relations.h.i.+p to Structure B is representative of that existing between most kitchens and their main buildings. Mount Vernon, Stratford, Blandfield, Nomini Hall, Rosewell, and many other plantations have, or had, kitchens located at points diagonal to the house and on axes at right angles to them. Usually each was balanced by a dependency placed in a similar relations.h.i.+p to the opposite corner of the house.

Sometimes covered walkways connected the pairs of dependencies, curved as at Mount Vernon, Mount Airy, and Mannsfield, or straight as at Blandfield in Ess.e.x County (1771). Marlborough, as we shall see, was not typical in its layout, but the relations.h.i.+p between kitchen and house was the customary one.

The thickness of the foundations in Structure E was the width of four bricks--approximately 17 inches. As usual in the case of the lower courses of a foundation, the bricks were laid in a somewhat random fas.h.i.+on. The intact portions of the south and west walls revealed corners of bricks laid end to end so as to expose headers on both sides.

The east wall showed pairs of bricks placed at right angles to each other, so that headers and stretchers appeared alternately. On the north wall of Room X bricks were laid as headers on the outside and as stretchers, one behind the other, on the inside. These variations probably are due to different bricklayers having worked on the building simultaneously. Since oddly a.s.sorted courses would have been below ground level, care for their appearance was minimal. Finished exterior brickwork was required only above the lowest point visible to the eye.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 49.--NORTH WALL of Structure E, looking east. Sign stands on part.i.tion wall between Rooms X and Y and in front of rectangular section of burnt red clay, upon which fireplace hearth stood. Projecting foundation at left may have supported an oven. Iron slab (see fig. 50) lies _in situ_ with trowel on top.]

Brick sizes ran from 9 to 9-1/2 inches long, 4 to 4-1/2 inches wide, and 2-1/4 to 2-3/4 inches thick. These measurements are similar to those of bricks in the veranda foundation and the added cellar cross wall of Structure B. It is apparent from Ledger G that the elements in Structure B, as well as the kitchen, were all built by Thomas Barry. Barry probably used bricks that he himself made, according to the custom of Virginia bricklayers, so that the archeological and doc.u.mentary evidences of the extent of his work in the two buildings reinforce each other.

The protruding rectangle of bricks at the north end of Structure E resembles the foundation for steps in Structure B. However, its position directly adjacent to what must be a.s.sumed to have been the fireplace precludes the possibility of its having been the location for a step.

Moreover, the pavement and doorstones at the west and south demonstrate that the floor of the kitchen was at ground level, so that a raised step at the north side would have been not only unnecessary, but impossible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 50.--WROUGHT-IRON SLAB, found in Room Y, Structure E, behind fireplace. Purpose unknown. Size, 6 by 35 inches.]

We know from the ledger that Barry built an oven and raised a chimney.

That the latter was a central chimney may be a.s.sumed on the basis of the evidence of the two fireplaces placed back to back. There is, however, no archeological evidence that there was an oven within the structure, and every negative indication that there was not. The rectangular protrusion, exactly in line with the end of the fireplace thus was apparently the foundation for a brick oven, the domed top of which extended outside the building, with its opening made into the north end of the fireplace. Protruding ovens are known in New York and New England, but none in Virginia has come to the writer's attention. On the other hand, protruding foundations like the one here are also unknown in Virginia kitchens, except where slanting ground, as at Mount Vernon, has made steps necessary.

It may be concluded that Structure E was the plantation kitchen, that it was built in 1749, that it had two rooms (a cookroom with fireplace paving and a large fireplace, and a second room with a smaller fireplace), that an oven built against the exterior of the building opened into the north end of the fireplace, and that the first, and probably the only, floor was at ground level. Archeological evidence points to final destruction of the building by fire. (Mercer indicated that fire had threatened it previously in the entry in his journal for April 22, 1765, which noted ”kitchen roof catch'd fire.”) In the form of datable artifacts, it also shows that the structure was destroyed in the early 19th century, since the latest ceramic artifacts date from about 1800.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 51.--EXCAVATION PLAN of structures north of Wall D.]

FOOTNOTES:

[157] CAYWOOD, loc. cit. (footnote 151).

[158] WATERMAN, loc. cit. (footnote 94).

XII

_Supposed Smokehouse Foundation_ (_Structure F_)

<script>