Bush Hill House

Bush Hill House, Barbados: Excavation of a Home Formerly Used by George and Lawrence Washington

by Anna Agbe-Davies

The Barbados National Trust has long held an interest in acquiring Bush Hill— the house rented by George and Lawrence Washington for a three-month stay in 1751—to use as museum and research center. Michael Chandler, Barbados’ first government archivist, and P. F. Campbell, historian and former editor of the Journal for the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, demonstrated that this site is that which the Washington brothers rented, and not a Bay Street house that has claimed the distinction since the 1890s.

Through the Trust’s lobbying efforts, in July 1999 the Barbadian Government agreed to compulsorily acquire Bush Hill from the Barbados Light and Power Company. Once the deal is closed, the Government intends to turn the site over to the Barbados National Trust for restoration to open it for public tours.

Using a generous Government gift, the Trust hired a team of architects, architectural historians, archaeologists, and students to study the site and make recommendations for its restoration, interpretation and long-term care. Penny Hynam Roach, executive director for the Trust, and Karl Watson, chairman of Bush Hill House Committee, contacted William Tilson, director of the University of Florida Preservation Institute: Caribbean, and Marley Brown III, director of the Department of Archaeological Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, to assemble a team for this study. The Trust hired Susan Bain as project director, and on-site work began in earnest on the first of September, 1999.

The Barbados National Trust intends to restore the house and grounds as a museum to celebrate Washington’s sojourn here and to further Barbados-United States relations. An interpretive center is planned, focusing on the role Barbados played in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a point of cultural an economic diffusion for the New World. To further this goal, a genealogical center is proposed that includes a database to assist visitors in tracing their roots to the island.

Our work is intended as a foundation for planning that will be necessary to bring about these goals (BNT 1997). We were charged with four tasks on this project.

First, we were asked to assess the archaeological potential of the property. Questions that we addressed include the condition and extent of below-ground features, general dates of major deposits or disturbances on the property, spatial arrangement of past activites at the site, and evidence that would assist in dating the present structures on the property and any changes to them. Although a first-phase project such as this could not be expected to provide a comprehensive view of how the site appeared and how it changed over time, we were successful in addressing many of these questions and laid the groundwork for a more extensive excavation.

Second, an architectural analysis focused on the main house to better understand the nature of its development. First was the need to determine whether any portion of the dwelling that the Washington brothers rented survives as the core of the present building. Secondly, we were asked to develop a chronology for the structure’s development. These two portions of the project required the removal of selected areas of modern plaster, stucco and flooring to look at the building’s core. A third requirement was to create a catalog of architectural features surviving throughout the house.

Third, the Florida team was charged with producing a set of measured drawings for the house and kitchen to document the building in its present condition. They were able to measure some of the outbuildings in addition to the mansion and have turned their fieldnotes into finished AutoCAD drawings.

Documentary research is critical to a project of this nature. Although we did not contract to work in the archives or write a historical narrative of the property, we did feel compelled to assemble the information that was readily available.

Finally, we were asked to plan this project and present our findings in a manner that could be used as an appropriate prototype for similar undertakings in the future.

Archaeological excavations took place over a three-week period under the supervision of project archaeologist Anna Agbe-Davies. Field technicians Carrie Alblinger, David Brown and Andrew Butts formed the field crew. Assistant curator for archaeological collections Kelly Ladd conducted the laboratory work. Carrie Alblinger drafted site plans and historic maps. All work was performed under the general supervision of Marley R. Brown, III.

Investigations of the house were undertaken by Colonial Williamsburg architectural historians Edward Chappell, director of Architectural Research, Willie Graham, curator of architecture, and Cary Carson, vice president of Research.

William Tilson and Herschel Shepard of the University of Florida assembled a team of architects and architectural students to undertake measured drawings. Team members include Steven VanDessell and Partha Ajgoankar, doctoral students in the architectural program.

Anna Agbe-Davies was formerly project archaeologist in the Department of Archaeological Research. This paper was written in 2001.