Material – Ceramic

Place of Origin – Unknown, likely South Carolina

The English colonists used brick to build some of the earliest buildings in the Carolina colony. Archaeologists have identified two brick buildings in the c.1670-1690s town lots at Charles Towne. The presence of brick architecture is a signature of affluent urban development in the early settlement and the implementation of English architectural ideals. The brick structure we are actively excavating has additional architectural elements that reflect the affluence of those who lived in the town including a lime floor, white lime plastered walls, and multi-paned windows. We have very little archival or archaeological evidence of 17th century brick architecture in the Carolina colony.[i] Archaeologists have identified a c.1674-1685 15-foot square wooden building at St. Giles Kussoe, the First Earle of Shaftesbury’s 12,000-acre plantation located up the Ashley River that sat on brick piers and had a substantial brick chimney. This property also had a brick-lined cellar that was impacted during property improvements in the 1970s and was later documented by archaeologists Michael Hartley and Stanley South in their archaeological survey of seventeenth century sites the Ashley River.[ii] A c.1690s building with a brick foundation was excavated at the Lesesne Plantation site on Daniel Island.[iii]

In the late 17th century the English preferred to use brick architecture in urban areas. The 1666 London Fire initiated new building regulations that focused on creating safer, more fire-resistant and uniform structures. The first Rebuilding Act of 1667 proclaimed that all new housing in London was to be built of brick or stone. English colonists on the Atlantic coast were also mandated to use brick and formal urban layouts that reflected modern London building plans. Despite these orders, brick architecture is not common in the colonies until after the early 18th century. Only a few colonial sites in the Chesapeake area had brick walled buildings in the mid-17th century. Brick churches were also rare in Virginia and Maryland. Archaeologists working on the Jamestown Virginia settlement have excavated several seventeenth brick town homes and the first brick statehouse.[iv]

If constructing brick homes was being mandated in the other colonial towns, it is likely that the colonists at Charles Towne were also being directed to construct their affluent urban homes in brick. As our excavations continue we will learn more about the urban design and architectural styles in the early town. We don’t have information on the first brickworks established in the Carolina colony. These early brickworks may have utilized apprentices, indentured servants, and enslaved Africans laborers. Some of the bricks at Charles Towne have impressions in them made by the hands of those who molded them – the only remaining link we have to those whose labor provided materials used to build the first town homes and played a significant role the success of the colony.

[i] Susan Bates and Harriott Cheves Leland (editors), Proprietary Records of South Carolina, Volume Two: Abstracts of the Records of the Register of the Province, 1675-1696 (The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2006), 133,147.

[ii] Andrew Agha, St. Giles Kussoe and “The Character of a Loyal States-man”: Historical Archaeology at Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper’s Carolina Plantation (Historic Charleston Foundation, 2012), 3-6,41; Michael O. Hartley, The Ashley River: A Survey of Seventeenth Century Sites, Research Manuscript Series 192 (South Carolina Institute of Archives and History, Columbia, SC 1984), 73-76.

[iii] Martha Zierden, Lesley Drucker, and Jeanne Calhoun, Home Upriver: Rural Life on Daniels Island, Berkeley County, South Carolina (Carolina Archaeological Services/The Charleston Museum, Columbia, 1986).

[iv] Willie Graham, Carter L. Hudgins, Carl R. Lounsbury, Fraser D. Neiman, and James P. Whittenburg, “Adaptation and Innovation: Archaeological and Architectural Perspectives on the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake, The William and Mary Quarterly 64(3):475-482; J.C. Harrington, “Seventeenth Century Brickmaking and Tilemaking at Jamestown, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 58(1):16-39, 17; Leo Hollis, London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London (Walker & Company, New York, NY, 2008), 135,143,154,197; Sara Pennell, The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850 (Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK, 2016), 49-50.