Little is known about the other rooms of Rosewell, 

 said to have been no fewer than 40 in number. 

 The principal source is again Mrs. Saunders, who 

 states that "All the rooms were wainscoted with wood 

 of different colors, and had marble mantels, the 

 ceilings were also of great height." " 



The description of the house given in the paragraphs 

 above is by no means complete, but it perhaps indi- 

 cates the splendor of the structure as originallv 

 conceived and draws attention to features that have 

 some bearing on finds made during the recent 

 excavations." 



Of great importance from an archeological point 

 of view are the sites of the outbuildings, which played 

 a major part in the life of the plantation if not of the 

 mansion itself. Of these little or nothing remains 

 above ground. A circular icehouse, with its shingled 

 roof intact until the 1930's, stood at some distance 

 to the southwest of the house. Today, however, the 

 roof has fallen into the pit and only part of the wall 

 still stands — a wall which probably dates from the 

 19th rather than from the 18th century. A colonial 

 well encircled by thick underbrush remains open a few 

 yards to the east of the mansion, but it is filled with 

 rubble to within ten feet or .so of the top. No attempt 

 has yet been made to excavate the contents. 



The principal outbuildings were the east and west 

 dependencies, which flanked the north approach to 

 the house and which were originally intended to be 

 linked to it by brick-walled passages similar to those 

 that survive at Mount Airy (1751). Although the 

 walls of the house were carefully keyed so that 

 the passage walls could be bonded into them, and 

 regardless of the fact that doors actually opened into 

 the places where the passages should be, it is doubtful 

 whether such passages were ever actually built. Only 

 careful archeological excavations can solve this prob- 

 lem, and the dangers of working so close to the 

 crumbling ruin will prevent such an investigation 

 until the walls finally collapse. 



An insurance policy (fig. 5) issued by the Mutual 

 Assurance Society of Virginia in 1802 that related to 

 fi\'e buildings — the mansion itself, its two dependen- 



" Ibid., p. 4. 



>' For a commentary on the g;round plan of Rosewell, see 

 Marcus Whiffen, "Some Virginia House Plans Reconsidered," 

 Journal oj the Society oj Architectural Historians, 1957, vol. 16, 

 no. 2, p. 17ff. 



cies, a brick stable and a wooden barn — set the value of 

 the property at $9,900. A comparison between the 

 sketches on the policy with the site plan (fig. 2) clearly 

 shov\s that the former were not drawn with much re- 

 gard for the relationships between the five buildings. 

 The kitchen (c) and the dwelling (b) sketched on the 

 policy represent the two dependencies of the same size 

 that stood on a north-south axis. However, it does 

 seem likely that buildings b, c, d would have been 

 shown correctly to east and west of the main hou.se. 

 The positioning of the barn (e), on the other hand, 

 may have been dictated only liy the space remaining 

 on the policy. 



The presence of the well to the east of the hou.sc sup- 

 ports the belief fostered by the insurance policy that 

 the kitchen was at the east. But the trash pit — with 

 which this paper is principally concerned — is to the 

 west of the house, and it contained large quantities of 

 refuse that one would have expected to be associated 

 with a kitchen. On the grounds that it would be un- 

 likely that the kitchen trash pits would normally be 

 dug where it would be necessary to carry the refuse 

 across the front of the house, the present anomalv may 

 be explained by the need to fill a large hole that was 

 dug for another purpose. 



Archeological evidence will later be used to indi- 

 cate that the policy is correct in situating the massive 

 (120 by 24 feet) brick stable (d) to the west of the man- 

 sion. A careful search through the jungle of vines and 

 underbrush in the area revealed a short stretch of 

 colonial ijrickwork northwest of the trash pit with a 

 number of cobble stones and bricks around it, these 

 perhaps having served as part of a roughly paved 

 yard. Scattered about to the east of the wall fragment 

 are a number of architectural items of Portland stone, 

 including nosings and a large semicircular piece that 

 may have formed part of the base of a column or, more 

 probably, the newel from a balustraded flight of steps. 



Probing and minor exploratory digging have re- 

 vealed the site of the east dependency, which seems to 

 have disappeared before the close of the 19th century. 

 An area approximately 56 by 45 feet was littered with 

 bricks, shell mortar, and huge quantities of oyster 

 shells, amid which were a few fragments of crockery 

 that could be attributed to the .second half of the 19th 

 century. 



The west dependency was doubtless the twin of the 

 kitchen, but its purpose is unknown. Photographs 

 taken in the late 19th century show standing on 

 this site a 1 '..-storied brick building;" with a wooden 



PAPER 18: EXCAVATIONS .\T ROSEWELL 

 600873—62 2 



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