Wood, Bricks, and Stone

The History of Home in the Early American South

Part 2: From Southern England to Southern Virginia

Ships moored in the James River at the first permanent English colony of Jamestown.

In 1607 England established her first permanent colony in the New World.  An attempt twenty-two years earlier under Queen Elizabeth I had met with disaster resulting in no survivors along the outer banks of what would later become North Carolina.

Shortly after the turn of the century, James I, one of the most influential kings in British history, transplanted English civilization 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and firmly established it in the New World opening up trade routes and migratory passage into that area, "commonly called Virginia" as stated in the First Virginia Charter, the royal grant authorizing the colony given on April 10, 1606. The colony had three main objectives: 1) to make habitation, meaning to colonize, 2) to make plantation or industrialize, and 3) "the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of his divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God...", to evangelize. A befitting endeavor for a prince who would later authorize the publication of the 1611 King James Bible.

As stated, the first English attempt at colonization had met with disaster at what has forever since been known as the 'Lost Colony' as the inhabitants of Roanoke Island vanished off the North Carolina coast sometime around 1590 with the loss of some 120 souls, men, women, and children, leaving behind nothing but the word "CROATOAN" carved into the face of a tree. Although the attempt in 1607 at Jamestown survived, the colony suffered greatly for lack of a strong work ethic among many of the initial colonists. The ship's passenger list showed too many "gentlemen" seeking adventure and riches with too little focus on the required daily activities necessary simply to survive. Nor was the original expedition adequately prepared to meet the hostile threats they would encounter in the Virgina wilderness. Most of the first colonists at Jamestown perished early in the experience. As a result, future expeditions were more sober and better provisioned with a larger military presence and contained within the passengers a larger number of people intent on permanent settlement rather than adventure.

The 'Middling Sort'

English men and women of "the middling sort" brought their culture, customs, traditions, and architecture to Virginia.

The stock of Englishmen that would become the backbone of the Virginia colony were an industrious people collectively referred to as 'the middling sort'.  Neither wealthy nor poor, these English men and women were capable of sustaining a self-sufficient working class resembling what in later years would be deemed the "middle class". They were largely Yeoman farmers, and "upper lower class" tenant farmers mixed with skilled tradesmen, Protestant to a man, mostly Anglican, and loyal to the king. Also well represented, increasingly so over the years, were the Cavaliers; that aristocratic wealthy elite that would be the loyal corps of Royalists as king battled parliament in the English civil wars of the 1640's. These transplanted Englishmen hailed mainly from areas in the south and west of England that predominately included the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, Devon, Dorsett, Wiltshire, and Hampshire with the next largest area of concentration being that of the environs of London.

A timber frame Tudor style Hall House in Herefordshire, England.

Tudor style in the New World

Those that embarked from England to Virginia brought with them their regional English culture and their regional English dialect. They also brought their building trades with which they crafted their very regional and very vernacular architecture so familiar to them back home.

A reconstructed Tudor style Hall House at Jamestown Settlement in Virginia.

The area from which the colonists were drawn was largely characterized by the Tudor-style timber frame which consisted of two types of houses, the Cruck house and the Hall house. The chief difference being the Hall house had a large center room with a centrally located fireplace. This room would be the center of activity for family and friend alike giving rise to the term Banquet Hall. The Cruck house takes its name from the "cruck" meaning crooked which referred to the vertical posts forming the gables. These posts were naturally curved, produced by sawing on the long grain an entire tree appropriate to the desired shape. Unlike the Hall house, the fireplace in a Cruck house would be located on one or both of the gable ends.

Both designs were constructed by timber framing with the method known as scribe rule where each component within the larger frame would only be crafted to fit into one exclusive junction. During the framing process, each joint would be identified by a Roman numeral on a particular post that corresponded to a particular beam, the junction being marked by, for example, a Roman numeral IV on the post tenon and likewise, a Roman numeral IV at the opening to the corresponding mortise. On a personal note, on a visit to the Yarn Market in the town of Dunster, England several years back, I was able to view the magnificent work of the timber framers who built the old market. Joinery marks were at each junction. I've also seen this as recent as 2020 on a visit to an 18th century home in North Bedford, Connecticut. Before the square rule method, all homes were built with these joinery marks which ensured swift and sure construction on "Rais'n Day".

Beyond the construction of the main frame, a universal characteristic with these homes was the "Wattle and Daub" finish. Wattle was a woven mesh "fence" made from either saplings taken directly from surrounding forest, such as in Virginia, or roughly 1-inch strips split with a draw knife or small froe from purchased white oak boards as in England where there was little availability of "free" timber of any size including saplings. The wattle would be woven into spans sufficient to cover the distance between the vertical posts in the main framing of the house. Once secured, a thick layer of Daub, a plaster-like substance made of clay, sand and straw, sometimes with the addition of lime, would be applied to the exterior and interior of the home forming a secure wall that was effective at reflecting the summer heat as well as holding in warmth in the winter. This was the architecture imported from the English countryside to the colonial grants in Virginia; the "New World" looked very much like the old one.

Prosperity and Dominion

Beginning in 1609, subsequent charters brought more and more settlers to Virginia firmly establishing English culture along the James River and throughout the Chesapeake Bay region. Along with "James Forte", up from the grassy tidal lands sprang Wattle and Daub houses from the beaches of the Atlantic, along the banks of the York and James rivers, all the way to "the Falls" in the vicinity of present-day Richmond. Prosperity was enjoyed by gentleman and laborer alike although life in the New World was not without at times soul crushing trials. The Powhatan Massacre in 1622 wiped out, by some estimates, as many as Three-Forths of the English colonists on a single day in March of that year. Previous to this there was the "starving time" at Jamestown in which those who remained of the 1609 expedition endured the hellish ordeal that was the winter of 1609-1610 in which actual cannibalism occurred due to prolonged starvation. Still, through it all, the intrepid spirits who made the voyage to Virginia eventually overcame their environment and subdued the land and prospered, eventually gaining status as a Royal Dominion in 1663 so ordered by King Charles II who said of Virginians they were, "the best of my distant children" and so elevated their status alongside that of England, Scottland, Ireland, and France.

In my next article I will trace the evolution of the uniquely American architecture that took its name from the oldest English colony, the Virginia House. - JLB

If this article sparks an interest to learn more about the people who settled the South, I invite you to follow A Distant Mirror - Recovering the American South a separate blog of mine featured on my other website concerning the American Civil War, www.walkinghome.tours.