The First Foundation of a Good House: Ferryland's Mansion House Kitchen

• Main Author: Archer, John D
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) 2024
• Subjects: Ferryland; Newfoundland; Kitchen; Detached Kitchen; Historical Archaeology; Other History of Art; Architecture; and Archaeology
• Online Access: https://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol50/iss1/10; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/viewcontent/NEHA_V50_2021_10_Archerpp125to141.pdf; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/0/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_1_The_Location_of_Ferryland.png; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/1/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_2_Layout_of_the_Kitchen.jpg; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/2/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_3_Relative_Proportions_of_Ceramic_Vessels.jpg; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/3/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_4_Fragments_of_a_Tin_Glazed_Earthenware_Mug.png; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/4/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_5_A_Lead_Bale_Seal.JPG; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/5/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_6_A_Copper_Book_Clasp.jpg; https://orb.binghamton.edu/context/neha/article/1555/filename/6/type/additional/viewcontent/Figure_7_A_DK_Token.JPG

The community of Ferryland, located on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, is home to the remains of George Calvert’s initial attempt at colonial settlement in North America. Over 25 years of excavations and research at the site have produced an increasingly detailed image of life in the seventeenth-century community there. As part of this ongoing work, the project discussed in this paper explores the use and provisioning of a detached kitchen which would have served Ferryland’s Mansion House. Built between 1621 and 1627, the structure makes up one half of a detached service wing adjacent to the Mansion House, fitting a pattern common to English manor houses in the late Middle Ages but out of style by the seventeenth century. Despite the seeming anachronism of its architecture, however, the assemblage associated with the kitchen fits the range of objects and items which made the kitchen the heart of the seventeenth-century domestic household. The domestic goods, routines, and foods found in the kitchen would have helped to make the reproduction of European social life imaginable in communities such as Ferryland, making it possible for George Calvert, David and Sarah Kirke, and those like them to consider moving their households across the Atlantic to North America.