Jamestown under this writer's direction and was designated as the
timber-framed "House on Isaac Watson's Land," built possibly as early as
1644. Before its destruction, it comprised one "hall," twenty feet by
twenty, with a great projecting fireplace at one gable big enough for an
eight-foot log to burn. The chimney must have been what we call a
"pyramid," and it was flanked on either side by small "outshuts," which
were probably "ingle recesses" or "chimney-pents." Inside, there was a
Dutch oven at one side of the fireplace and a setting for a brewing
copper next to it. This was no pauper's hovel, for the casements were
leaded, and the hardware included fancy wrought-iron hinges, including
the fairly-rare "Cock's Head" hinge.
Another structure of this type is here illustrated under the caption,
"Medieval One-Bay House" (c. 1670) in Virginia. Without including its
tremendous "pyramid" chimney, the dwelling measures twenty-and-a-half
feet long and sixteen wide. The chimney end is wholly brick, and the
other three sides clapboarded. The one downstairs room, the "Great
Hall," has exposed posts, beams, and wall plates, with chamfers
terminating in crude "lamb's tongues." In a corner opposite the
fireplace there was a stepladder or very steep staircase, only
twenty-seven inches wide. Upstairs there was one sleeping room with two
tiny, lie-on-your-stomach windows--almost peep-holes--to give air and
light. There were no dormers, and the long cedar shingles were pegged to
thin oaken strips across the rafters. Even the floor beams were pegged
to the rafters so that the roof on a stormy night would not part company
with the "Great Hall."
[Illustration: A Medieval Hall-and-Parlor House in Va.]
When the planter or tradesman became a little wealthier, or his family
became larger, it was a simple matter to add a "parlor" to one end of
the homestead, thus making the second stage of development, the
"hall-and-parlor" dwelling. There was a regular "school" of building of
such habitations in seventeenth-century Virginia. In such examples the
parlor was smaller than the "Hall" or "Great Room." Sometimes, of
course, the early settler commenced with a "hall-and-parlor" residence
built all at once.
The foremost example of this type in the Old Dominion is the "Adam
Thoroughgood House" (c. 1640), Princess Anne County, a brick
storey-and-garret dwelling, with a flush chimney at one gable and a
"pyramid" at the other. The chimney-stacks are "T"s, meaning that they
are designed in that shape in plan to reveal multiple flues. The
brickwork is English bond, and the windows, before alterations, were
leaded casements. The doors, too, were battened, or built up with
boards. All the openings have segmental arches, and high up on the brick
gables are lines of glazed header bricks parallel to the rakes.
Of the same ilk is another brick lodging, the "Wishart House" (c. 1680)
in Norfolk, which has two pyramid, "T"-chimneys, and a cornice
terminated by little corbels of overlapping brick--a common medieval
feature. Other extant examples are "Sweet Hall" (c. 1695) and "Warburton
House" (c. 1680), both of which had a projecting addition at the rear.
In fact the records are full of "hall-and-parlor" houses which may have
been destroyed, such as Sam Wools' plantation (1638) on Eastern Shore,
twenty-five feet long and sixteen wide--a standard size. There was "one
partition in it," and it had only one chimney and only one wing, a
buttery. The kitchen, it seems, was not mentioned, but it probably was
an outhouse.
It was a natural step to the third development, the "central-passage"
type, a group of buildings named by this writer for the purpose of
convenience. A "screen" or wooden partition was added to the end of the
"Hall" or Great Room in order to make a passage from front to back in
the center of the edifice. In that way the living space, the "Hall," was
made more private than when it served as a passageway. At any rate, the
brick "Keeling House" (c. 1700), Princess Anne County, is a good
specimen. A later, or "Hangover" phase of the central-passage type is
"Smith's Fort Plantation," generally known as the "Rolfe House," Surry
County, which has been continuously and erroneously dated 1652, but
which really belongs to the first half of the eighteenth century.
[Illustration: A Cross Plan in Virginia "Bacon's Castle," c. 1650]
The last or culminating development in the rural dwelling was the
changing of a "hall-and-parlor" habitation, or one of "central-passage"
variety, into a "cross-house." The cross was formed by adding an
enclosed porch, usually with a "porch chamber" above it, on the front
facade, and a wing, like a stair tower, to the rear. However, a
"T"-shaped domicile, with no back wing, is also classified as a
"cross-house." An old record tells of one Southey Littleton, of
Accomack, who had a porch and porch chamber on the front of his
dwelling--in other words, a cross-house. Of the extant or partially
extant examples in Virginia are "Bacon's Castle" (c. 1650), Surry
County; "Malvern Hill" (c. 1662), Henrico County; and "Christ's Cross"
(c. 1690) and "Foster's Castle," (c. 1685) both in New Kent. They make a
veritable school of building which once must have flourished the length
and breadth of tidewater Virginia. With its noted "Bond Castle,"
Maryland, too, had a school of cross-houses.
Of the Virginia examples, "Bacon's Castle," two-storeys-and-garret high,
with basement, was built by one Arthur Allen, and was named for the
rebel, Nathaniel Bacon, who in 1676 ordered his men to capture the
dwelling. "Castle" meant "fort." Its cross-plan incorporated a porch,
porch chamber, and stair tower. A low, wooden, curtain and kitchen
extension, which is believed to have been seventeenth century in date,
formerly stood off the gable on the "Hall" side--an arrangement
indicating that the Great Room perhaps also served as a dining room. The
curtain was the buttery, or bottlery.
[Illustration: Medieval Diamond Stacks in Virginia
Plan
Bacon's Castle c. 1650 West Gable]
But the most distinguishing feature of "Bacon's Castle" is the Jacobean
"curvilinear" gable at each end. These gables possess round
members--"cuspings"--and steps, built pretty much the same way in which
they were made in England and the Low Countries. The chimney stacks are
Tudor, three in number, set diagonally on their bases at each gable.
Because of the way these chimneys look in plan, we call them "diamond
stacks."
Also Jacobean are the crude brick pediment over the main entrance, now
much changed, and the brick borders surrounding the windows--called
"enframements." And of course, the windows formerly held leaded
casements, with mullions and transom bars.
Two important features of another of the cross-houses mentioned belong
to "Christ's Cross," called for short, "Criss Cross." This writer can
remember when there was hardly a person who knew of the existence of
this place, and where it was located. The double door opening out into
the enclosed porch from the "Hall" we have denoted as the "finest Tudor
door in all Virginia"--because of its panel design and Gothic mouldings;
and the post in the "Hall" has probably the finest Jacobean carved
capital in the United States. The capital is in truth a _folk_ Jacobean
carving, a grotesque, comprising a raised heart-shaped shield with
crudely chiselled volutes upon it, and an "echinus" or cushion, and an
"abacus" or block above it. It reminds one of the ancient Greek Ionic
wooden capitals in Athens, Asia Minor, or elsewhere, which possessed
rough or incipient volutes.
[Illustration: The Folk Jacobean Post Capital (c. 1690) "Christ's
Cross," Va.]
Study of the cross-house in Virginia needs an essay to itself. We have
tried here to give some of the highlights of this last development of
the rural dwelling, which is outstandingly medieval in design and
construction--with a bit here and there of Jacobean trimming.
[Illustration: Archaic Ionic Cap found at Athens]
Branching off the main stream of country house development are
exceptions and special cases, such as "The Green Spring" mansion (c.
1646), Sir William Berkeley's home near Jamestown. Sometimes it is
mistakenly called the first large country house in America, but it may
not lay claim to that status since the earlier "Governor's Castle" in
Maryland had a larger area. However that may be, "The Green Spring" for
its time was baronial. It seems to have been a "double-parlor"
dwelling--an English derivative, where the "Hall" stood between two
parlors. When the recently-revealed watercolor of this mansion-house by
Benjamin Henry Latrobe is published, its features, like the roof
"shingled" with dormers and the front porch of "clumsy Jacobean
brickwork" may be more fully described.
[Illustration: The Pre-Berkeley House at "The Green Spring," Va.
Restoration by Author]
In the recent excavations at "The Green Spring" were found the brick
footings of a _pre_-Berkeley building. We know that it antedated Sir
William's great pile because part of it was covered by Sir William's
structure. Our floor plan, based on Kocher, Waterman, and Dimmick, shows
a very unusual room arrangement for seventeenth-century Virginia. It
looks very much like an "E"-plan of the Elizabethan Style of
architecture. And at the rear were "cells" or "outshuts." With grains of
allowance, the sketch of the entrance front is conjectural, but probably
has enough of the truth about it to reveal the unique character of the
edifice.
iii. THE TOWN DWELLING
Because Virginians in founding their towns wished to crowd their houses
in rows along their streets, the city abode is substantially different
in type from the rural one. Many of our city developers today are
building squeezed-up row houses, in order to make as much money as
possible, where the front foot is valued in dollars. But, for all that,
the Jamestown developers were doing the very same thing, building
sardine-packed row dwellings--only the payment was in English currency.
Inside James Fort that first year the settlers erected streets of
"settled" houses, which, because of the small space available within the
palisade, must have been of necessity row homes. The current oil
painting of James Fort in the Jamestown Museum is all very fine, being
based largely on a plan and description of the first settlement by the
writer; but it has one great error: the houses are not contiguous to one
another, as they were forced to be within the cramped space of the
triangular palisade. Four years later, the settlement had two fair rows
of timber-framed houses, two storeys and garret high. Even storehouses
at Jamestown were constructed in rows. In 1614 there were erected in
that settlement three large, substantial storehouses, joined together in
length about one hundred and twenty feet, and extending in breadth forty
feet.
[Illustration: The Governor's House, c. 1620 A Jamestown Duplex]
What appears from a drawing in the Ambler Manuscripts to be an early
example of a row dwelling is the "Governor's House" or the "Country
House,"--the word, country, meaning not countryside, but Colony or
Province. This edifice was situated at Jamestown, but it was outside the
triangular Fort and upon the so-called "fourth ridge," the highest
ground near that fortification. The house was erected some time between
the arrival in Virginia of Sir George Yeardley in 1619 and the year
1660. The probable date lies somewhere in the 1620s. The manuscript
drawing is crudely drawn and badly torn, but it does indicate a
one-and-a-half storey domicile with three chimneys, one in the center
and one at each end--making what seems to be a _double_ house--a duplex.
Excavations of the fragmentary brick remains of the "Governor's House"
revealed that it was a brick edifice fifty-three feet long and twenty
wide, with a little frame wing at the rear. Unfortunately no trace
remained of the central chimney; but at any rate the diggings
established that the eastern half had a cellar, while the western
section did not--another indication of the double house.
There is an interesting story about the "Governor's House." Those who
disagree with the Gregory-Forman theory of the site of James Fort of
1607 being at or near the point below Orchard Run, Jamestown Island, not
a half mile up river near the Brick Church, must explain away the
conversation recorded in the archives of Virginia for the night of June
23, 1624, at the "Governor's House," Jamestown. Briefly, there were two
"fellows" who lurked on that evening under the walls of this building,
trying to get inside. They were seen and hailed by sentries on the walls
of James Fort. One of the men at the Fort shouted at the two fellows:
"Que Vulla?"--evidently stock military vulgar Latin for _Quae Vultis_?,
"What do you want?" To which question the two fellows at the "Governor's
House" replied that they could not get in because the door was locked.
It is obvious that the Fort lay near the Governor's House and not half a
mile away.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE "NEW TOWNE" AT JAMES CITY.
Illustrating buildings mentioned in the text, and based on a map in
the writer's _Jamestown and St. Mary's_]
At least by 1623, it was the desire of the Virginia Company of London to
build towns in Virginia which would possess a convenient and suitable
number of houses, constructed together of brick and encircled by a
battlemented brick wall. Exactly in the same way Cecilius Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, commanded the first Maryland settlers to lay out row houses
in their first settlement.
And also, Jamestown excavations have borne out the fact that the typical
city building was usually a row affair. The few rural homes within the
city limits may not be classified as "town" houses. There are at least
five groups of row houses known at Jamestown, and there are even stock
sizes for such groups. Twenty feet by forty, measured on the inside of
the walls, were the most common dimensions--an inheritance from British
medieval building laws.
[Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: Cellar]
[Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: River Front
Author's Reconstruction]
Perhaps the foremost of the James City row buildings is the group of
three brick edifices which comprised the "First State House" in
Virginia. The three cellars, their long walls being party walls, were
excavated under the direction of this writer and of a colleague. The
structure was originally two storeys and garret high. The down-river, or
eastern section, and the central portion, were erected about 1635 by
Governor John Harvey and were used as the capitol building of the Colony
from 1641 for fifteen years. The up-river section was built before 1655
by Sir William Berkeley. But by 1670 the whole pile, with its three
front gables facing the James River, had gone up in flames.
The unit floor plan of the "First State House" comprised a
"hall-and-parlor" dwelling with back-to-back fireplaces and a very
narrow passageway running the length of the building at one side. Now
that arrangement formed pretty much the stock plan of the city house in
seventeenth-century London, as our researches have disclosed. That the
"First State House" was Tudor in appearance is evidenced by the great
wealth of medieval wrought-iron hardware found in the ruins: such items
as Cock's Head hinges, leaded lattice casements, and great rim locks
with eight-inch keys. The roof once carried the medieval "pantile,"
which is an "S"-shaped clay tile about thirteen inches long, with a nob
at one end to catch on to the roofing strips.
Another row example with gables facing the street lay about a thousand
feet north of the Brick Church at Jamestown. It comprised two brick
buildings with their long sides being party walls; and we have named
them the "Double House on the land of Thomas Hampton." Each basement is
approximately sixteen feet by twenty-four in size--another stock
configuration--which came about as the result of the Virginia Act of
1639. This duplex contained beautiful Delft tiles in the fireplaces,
representing figures of Dutchmen at sport and at play.
[Illustration: London 17{th} C. Town Houses]
Not all row dwellings had gables across the front; some buildings were
joined end to end, their gables party walls. The most important example
of such at Jamestown is what we have called the "Country-Ludwell-State
House" block of five buildings, situated up river a short distance from
the Brick Church. Four of these were private homes, and the fifth was
the "Third State House." They were all set up as a result of the Act of
1662 calling for thirty-two brick (row) dwellings, arranged in a square
or other form which the Governor should decide. Each dwelling was to be
twenty feet by forty on the inside, eighteen feet from floor to eaves,
fifteen feet from eaves to ridge measured vertically, and to have a
slate or tile roof. Of these four habitations, the two nearest the river
had floor plans similar to that of the "First State House," already
described, except that the gables adjoined one another.
To delve a little further into the subject of this interesting block, we
may note that the other two houses were of the same size as the pair
nearer the water, but that they had "flush" chimneys abutting the party
walls instead of "central" chimneys with back-to-back fireplaces. These
two were also marked by three enclosed porches on their front facades.
All four dwellings had "cell" or "aisle" additions at the rear.
Another row house at James City is what we have called the "Double House
back of John White's Land," where half the building possessed a large,
brick-vaulted, wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles kept within it--a
feature indicating a tavern. Let no one think they did not drink at
Jamestown: the whole settlement was permeated with taverns and
ale-houses.
One of the most recent finds at Jamestown is a triplet or "triplex" row,
lying some four hundred feet northeast of the Brick Church. The three
dwellings faced south, and each measured twenty by fifty-two feet within
the walls. There was the customary back-to-back fireplace on the north
wall of each unit; but the easternmost house had an exterior fireplace
at its east gable-end, and a square porch room on the south.
As new discoveries are made in this first capital of Virginia, it
becomes clearer year by year that the city was full of row buildings,
trying to emulate Oxford or Chipping Camden or even the great London
herself.
iv. CHURCHES, CHAPELS, AND GLEBES
The medieval Virginia church of the seventeenth century was generally a
crossroads shrine set down in or near the middle of a group of
plantations. Towns, like James City, also had their own churches,
situated on the main thoroughfares. When roads were too bad for
traversing, or distances were too great, parishioners built sometimes
small fanes called "chapels of ease," nearer their homes than the main
parish churches.
The starting point for the Virginia church is at Jamestown, a place
which can count five churches, and perhaps more. For brevity we list
them:
1. The "cruck" church of 1607, the first substantial church, which,
according to Smith, was covered by rushes, boards, and earth.
2. The timber-framed church of 1610, of Lord Delaware, sixty feet
by twenty-four in size, where took place in 1614 the marriage of the
Indian princess, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe. This edifice had
casements on hinges and, at the west end, two bells.
3. Argall's frame church of 1617, fifty feet by twenty, which by
1623 may have been the structure possessing a latticed gallery for
ladies, and which needed repairs in 1624.
In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention
some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the
puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Shore. Then there was the
Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone
footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of
1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which
probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower,
because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in
seventeenth-century Virginia--at least, as far as present research has
disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet
out--big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells.
To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches:
4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the
Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The
brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at
Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church;
but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within
James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard
Run, Jamestown Island.
5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and
foundation are extant.
[Illustration: Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown
After a Foundation Plan in "Jamestown and St. Mary's"]
The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English"
bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built
separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at
the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways--as the floor plan
shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof
was probably battlemented or crenellated.
The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick
arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion.
In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the
Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some
interesting medieval features: buttresses; pointed and mullioned
windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile
chancel floor.
The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church,"
often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We
are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved
medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered
"1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent
years have assigned to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or
before" and "1682."
Unlike the belfry of the Brick Jamestown Church, the tower of old "St.
Luke's" is incorporated into the west gable-end of the building. It,
too, probably had a battlemented top, which has now been changed. That
the Jamestown belfry is a good deal older than the one at "St. Luke's"
is proven by the simplicity of design of the former in contradistinction
to the sophisticated appearance of the latter. The "St. Luke's" tower
possesses Jacobean brick quoins, a feature imitating corner stones, and
an "embryo" or much simplified, triangular pediment, of Jacobean
derivation, over the circular-headed doorway.
[Illustration: The East Window St. Luke's Church, Va.]
The buttresses, the crow-stepped gables, the pointed windows at "St.
Luke's" are all original medieval features. In fact the great east
window of the chancel, made up of eight main lights separated by
foliated tracery, is English Gothic, of the style known as "Decorated"
or "Geometric," which flourished between 1307 and 1377 in England. A
source for this east window is the chancel traceried window at Liscomb
Park Chapel (c. 1350), Soulbury, England.
From the foregoing it is obvious that the main body of the "St. Luke's"
church preceded the Tudor Style and is "Decorated" Gothic. The tower has
Jacobean trimmings. At the same time it is erroneous to call this church
"Gothic Colonial." What a mixture! In style it is English Gothic, that
is, Gothic of England. It is as much Gothic as "Westminster Abbey" or
"Wells" or "Yorkminster." What a multitude of errors is covered by that
word "Colonial."
Recent research done at "St. Luke's" has uncovered the original,
chamfered, timbered trusses and horizontal tie-beams, which were
exposed in the nave; traces of the original gallery at the tower end of
the nave which appears to have had balusters of oak; the old wineglass
pulpit; and the enclosed porch or vestibule in the first storey of the
tower.
[Illustration: Liscomb Park Chapel
Soulbury England c. 1350
A Source for "St. Luke's," Virginia]