It was apparent that the house had been of frame construction resting on brick foundations laid in English bond. It was a little over twice as long as it was broad, and appeared even longer when seen with its massive exterior chimneys at either end. Such a house would probably have been a story and a half in height, having an A roof with dormers probably facing both east and west.[109] Fragments of small panes and lead window cames found in the excavations suggest that the windows were leaded and therefore of casement type. On the first floor there probably were two rooms, a hall and chamber—perhaps divided by a central passage with exterior doors at either end. Prior to the building of the separate kitchen, the hall may have been used for cooking. Above, there were probably two rooms approached by a staircase leading from the passage. This reconstruction assumes, of course, that no porch chamber existed on the west side.
Since no evidence of a dirt or brick floor was encountered, it is assumed that the floors were of wood. Beyond establishing, from foundation widths, that the building was of frame construction, it must be noted that no archeological evidence of the above-grade appearance of the building was forthcoming. Mr. E. M. Frank, director of architecture for Colonial Williamsburg, whose conjectural elevation provides the frontispiece to this paper, points out that the roof may have been made from lapping oak strips some four feet in length, as were found at the Brush-Everard House in Williamsburg. He further suggests that the weatherboards could also have taken the form of similar split-oak strips, precedent for which survives in the west wall of the John Blair House, also in Williamsburg.
A house of the above proportions and character was a little better than many a yeoman's home in England, although it owed its origins to those same homes. It was larger than the smaller houses of Jamestown, but only just as large as the smaller houses of Williamsburg, whose sizes were regulated by an Act of Assembly in 1705. The Tutter's Neck residence differed from most of the Williamsburg houses in that it had no cellar. While it was a perfectly adequate house for a Williamsburg citizen of average means and status, one might be tempted to assume that it would not long have sufficed as the home of Col. Frederick Jones who, in North Carolina, aspired to 6 children and 42 slaves.[110]
On the other hand, it may be noted that the Carters of "Corotoman" on the Rappahannock, one of the wealthiest families in Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century, had lived in a rather similar house prior to the building of an imposing and larger brick mansion. The latter burned in 1729, whereupon Robert "King" Carter moved back into the old 17th-century house. Carter's inventory made at the time of his death in 1732, and now in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society, identifies the rooms in the "Old House" as comprising a dining room, chamber over the dining room, lower chamber, chamber over the lower chamber, and a porch chamber. This last strongly suggests that the "Old House" was of 17th-century date. As other buildings named in the inventory are noted as being of brick (probably advance buildings for the burnt mansion), it may be assumed that the "Old House" was of frame construction and so might well have been of the same class as the Tutter's Neck residence. A further similarity is to be found in the fact that the Carter inventory lists no cellars beneath the "Old House."
The Kitchen
Like the residence, this subsidiary building was not without its unusual features, the most obvious being the position of the massive chimney standing against the main east-west axis of the building instead of at one of the ends, the normal position. Thus, instead of being supported by the A of the roof, the chimney was freestanding above the first floor with the pitch of the roof running away from it.
The building possessed external measurements of 25 ft. 4½ in. by 16 ft. 7½ in.; the foundations, laid in English bond, were one brick (9 in.) thick. The chimney abutted against the north wall, measured 10 ft. by 5½ ft.; its sides were 11 ft., 1 ft. 9 in., and 11 in. thick.[111] Such a building would have stood to a height of a story and a half with one room on the first floor and a rude attic above, probably approached from a ladder.
Cuttings across the foundations showed that the bricks were unevenly laid. At one point in the south wall the bricks jogged out to a distance of two inches, as though the foundation had been laid from both ends and failed to meet correctly in the middle. There was no possibility that this unevenness could have been caused by settling or root action after building, for the builder's trench was filled with clearly defined burnt clay that also followed the jog.
The same red clay was packed in the builder's trench all around the kitchen building. It was also used to span soft depressions resulting from refuse pits dug and filled with trash before the building was erected. For some unexplained reason the kitchen was constructed over an area that previously had been set aside for the burying of domestic refuse. The largest and earliest of the five pits excavated was situated partially beneath the massive kitchen chimney, whose foundation, not surprisingly, had settled into the pit. Another rectangular pit in the middle of the building was not only topped with a pad of red clay but was partially covered by a cap or pier of laid brickbats that perhaps served as a support for floor joists.
The presence of the pits sealed beneath the kitchen provided two pieces of information: that the site had been occupied for some time before its construction, and that it was not built before about 1730 or 1740—this on the evidence of a wine bottle found at the bottom of Pit D. If this was the first separate kitchen building erected on the site, it must be assumed that the cooking was originally carried on in one of the first-floor rooms of the residence. However, the fact that the archeological excavations were so limited makes any conjecture of that kind of dubious value.