The collapse of several structures at the Colony of Avalon site in Ferryland sparked a bit of serendipity this past summer when the repairs resulted in the discovery of new artefacts and added to the understanding of life at the settlement in the early 1600s.
The repairs had to be made to three different stone structures dating from the earliest years of the religious colony, including a six-foot section of the mansion house wall which had collapsed, and an eight-foot section of another stone wall that also had to be rebuilt.
"And probably the most challenging, certainly the most unfortunate, was the large stone fireplace inside George Calvert’s mansion house," said chief archaeologist Dr. Barry Gaulton. "To rebuild the mansion house fireplace, we actually had to remove hundreds and hundreds of large rocks that were pushed forward from all the pressure from the infill in behind the mansion house fireplace."
So, not only did the crew have to remove the rock from the fireplace, they also had to excavate behind the fireplace to get at the original footing stones in order to rebuild the feature on its original footings.
"This actually required doing some archaeology, it wasn't just me and Neil rebuilding walls," Gaulton said, referring to the foundation’s crew chief, Neil Jordan. "So, we excavated a half metre by four metre trench and as you'd expect, we found lots of construction debris from the mansion house – things like slate roof tile fragments, limestone, pieces of brick. But at the bottom of the trench, we found something we didn't expect. It was an upright wooden post. We interpreted that to be part of a wooden scaffolding that must have been built at the back of the house to construct this two-story building. So, the fireplace rebuilding project actually turned out to be quite informative for our overall interpretation of the mansion house. We always assumed there was a scaffolding needed to construct such a high building, but this is our first real tangible evidence for the scaffolding. It was pretty informative."
The crew marked the completion of the fireplace's reconstruction by setting a small fire inside it, the first one in hundreds of years. It was used to “fire ready” replacement cobblestones for another part of the project.
As for the actual planned excavations this past summer, the team focused on two areas, the first being a 1620s industrial building discovered five years ago, the second being an area near The Pool Road across from the old Colony Cafe. The latter is where the crew uncovered evidence of a 17th century cobblestone street some years ago.
The goal for the industrial building was to finish digging through its midden. That’s essentially the garbage dump associated with the building. The midden turned out to be much larger than expected and yielded a variety of artefacts dating from the 1620s to 1640s. "Things like case bottle glass, ceramics, several datable pipe bowls, including a couple with really nice maker's marks on them," Gaulton said.
The crew also wanted to sift through any builders' trench deposits around the edges of the structure, Gaulton added, but the results weren't as good as those found in the midden. "It was mostly construction debris, stuff like rooftop fragments, small bits of slate and shale used for the walls, but we also found this really early, small 17th century pipe bowl, which really is helpful, because it confirms and strengthens our interpretation that this building dates from the early years of the 1620s. It's firmly dated to the Calvert period.”
Sir George Calvert, also known as Lord Baltimore, was the English baron who sent Captain Edward Wynne to Newfoundland in 1621 to establish the colony at Ferryland. Calvert was later instrumental in seeing a second one founded in Maryland as another place for Roman Catholics to practice their religion in freedom from the persecution at home, though he had died by the time the grant for it was approved.
The remains of the industrial building that Galton’s team explored this past summer were discovered five years ago and was considered interesting because while it was built around the time the settlement was founded, it was located outside the Colony’s settlement zone. Artefacts from it indicated that it had a large fireplace and other workings for industrial type activities.
"After five years of excavating and recording this building, I'd say we're now about 95 per cent complete," Gaulton said. "This is likely my last report on this really interesting structure located outside of the original four-acre village."
The second area of focus this summer, a section of ground above a long-buried cobblestone street, also threw up some surprises.
"The street itself is about four feet below the current surface and directly above the street is a really rich midden deposit from the second half of the 17th century," Gaulton said.
Crew chief Jordan supervised the opening of a one by three metre area for excavation.
"And has always been the case, and yes it makes me jealous sometimes, Neil really finds interesting stuff," Gaulton said. "Artefacts seem to be naturally attracted to Neil. This summer was certainly no exception."
Inside the upper strata of the trench, Jordan found 18th century wine bottle fragments, pieces of German stoneware mugs, an iron padlock, tobacco pipes and a copper and silver button with a floral motif.
"And that was just in the upper layers of that particular builders' trench," Gaulton said. "As he got deeper and deeper, of course, he started to find objects from the 17th century, things like a lead bale seal, and he found a partial glass bottle seal. We still don't know who the individual was (who owned the seal). The letters in the surname look to be B E A. He found part of an iron door lock, parts of a door latch, and a really small fishhook, which is really similar in size to a modern size 9 freshwater fishhook. It looks like some Ferryland residents back in the 17th century were likely spending some leisure time fishing for trout and salmon."
At the bottom of the deposit, Jordan found a massive rock. "It's the kind of rock that (the Colony’s founding archaeologist) Jim Tuck used to refer to as a whale egg," said Gaulton. "So now we had this dilemma of what are we going to do with this 500-pound pet rock of Neil's? Well, Neil wasn't able to karate chop it in half despite several attempts, so he eventually threw up his hands and said, 'That's it, the rock is here to stay.' And you know, Neil was exactly right, because the rock has been in exactly the same location for at least 400 years. And we know this because as Neil uncovered parts of that cobblestone street, you could see that the southern edge of the street was built up directly against the edge of that rock. That rock was here when the original colonists were planning the overall direction and orientation of the street... The rock is still a bit of a pain, but it was there for a long time and that's where it's going to stay."
