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AGRICULTURAL BUILDINGS IN THE

COLONIAL CAPITOL AND BEYOND

An overview of 18th century

agricultural buildings in

Williamsburg, VA, and

throughout the greater

Chesapeake Region

by Jennifer Wilkoski
Shirley & Richard Roberts Architectural Historian
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

The 18th century threshing barn at Clover Hill in Albemarle County, Virginia. While slightly modified over time, the building essentially stands as it did when Thomas
Jefferson visited in 1796 to view the wheat threshing machine installed by William Douglas Meriwether. photo: Jennifer Wilkoski, 2017

nlike their domestic counterparts, early barns and agricultural houses, taverns, and commercial buildings and help provide a glimpse
buildings do not tend to survive as well as houses of the colonial of what life was like in the colonial era.
Uera. Utilitarian in purpose and sometimes roughly constructed,
the earliest agricultural building in the Chesapeake region, which An Era of Research and Discovery
consists of Maryland and Virginia, dates to no earlier than 1750.
Today, these rare survivors can tell us much about the early people who
built and used them.
While no original barns, stables, or livestock shelters survive today
at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, VA—the
country’s largest outdoor living history museum—visitors can see
reconstructions of these common 18th century agricultural buildings
while walking through town. A reconstructed tobacco barn and
corncrib stand at Great Hopes, an area outside of town that was set
up to function as a rural plantation. In town, numerous stables,
smokehouses, and dairies, some original, can be found tucked behind

Roberts House Site Barn, Isle of Wight County, Virginia.
photo: Willie Graham for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1994

Beginning in 1980, Colonial Williamsburg’s Architectural Research
Department began recording agricultural landscapes across the
Chesapeake region in a decade-long survey that would eventually be
named the Agricultural Buildings Project. These agricultural land-
scapes, many populated with forlorn antiquated outbuildings, became
the focus of the team. That research eventually gave way to a deeper
understanding of early agricultural buildings including barns, stables,
granaries, and livestock housing.
In the colonial and early-American period what exactly did a barn
look like? Barns, and in fact, any building in the 18th century was a
An architectural historian measuring details of an early Chesapeake stable for the product of many influences. Location, ethnic background, and socio-
Colonial Williamsburg Architectural Research Department Agricultural Buildings economic class all played a large part in the appearance, construction
Project. Willie Graham for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1983 techniques, and function of any building. The Chesapeake region,

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