St. Paul’s Church stands amidst a serene, tree-shrouded cemetery in downtown Norfolk. It’s tall brick walls, erected in 1739, are monuments to Norfolk’s colonial importance, and its tumultuous history. But even this ancient edifice hides a deeper history: an earlier church, built in 1699, is somewhere beneath the ground surface, and its story has not yet been told. Since 2012 we have been venturing to St. Paul’s churchyard, looking for clues to the location and appearance of this earlier church.
Like so many of Norfolk’s colonial buildings which have been lost, the early parish records are not complete, and there are a few key pieces of information that allow for a reconstruction of the broad history of the early church. We know that the vestry of Elizabeth River Parish had a church constructed on this property by 1699, but we lack the construction details specifying its size and ornamentation. This was the second ‘Borough Church’, replaced by the current church in 1739. In both 1750, and again in 1760, the surviving vestry book contains entries allowing different individuals to have the “Bricks & Timber of the Old Church” and to clean up the church yard of debris from this earlier building. This provides some evidence for how the earlier building was constructed, as well as activities that took place within the churchyard that may have left an archaeological footprint, particularly the demolition and cleanup process. After the 1699 church was removed, it is assumed that the newly unoccupied portion of the churchyard was then used for burials, since this was the only cemetery in Norfolk during the colonial period, and space was limited. Finding clues that add detail to our limited knowledge of this earlier church has been the goal of our archaeological research.
Our initial work involved a dense probing survey of the southeast portion of the churchyard, the most likely location for the 1699 church. The results of this work suggested that beneath the quiet ground surface was a busy place, full of brick and stone fragments that suggested unmarked burials, dislodged tombstones, and possible evidence of an early building. We followed this work with the excavation of larger test units, designed to help expose some of these buried layers and artifacts.
Doing archaeology within active churchyards, particularly those in urban areas, is not easy. Unlike plowed plantation sites like Fairfield, where one easily excavated layer contains the full spectrum of a site’s history, and when removed, exposes evidence of fences and buildings that used to be there, urban sites are generally more complex. Instead of plowing we have the accumulation and deposition of multiple cultural layers, while features such as burials and walkways can cut through these layers at any point. All of this means that the ground holds a detailed record of activity at the site, but it also means that finding clues to a building from 300 years ago can be quite challenging.
After completing seven test units in the southern portion of the churchyard, we are beginning to understand the complex history of activities that took place here. There are multiple layers of landscaping fill that have created the level and pleasant churchyard of today. These layers have yielded hundreds of artifacts, like ceramics, glass bottles, and buttons that speak to the people who frequented the churchyard and lived on surrounding lots. A few other artifacts, including larger fragments of hand-made brick, and thinner fragments of hand-made floor tiles, suggest that we are close to remains of the 1699 church, but in and of themselves do not prove the earlier church’s location. Knowing that the church was dismantled and ‘cleaned up’, we are looking for subtle clues in the soil that indicate where foundation walls used to be. We have some promising leads, but need to uncover more before we can confidently say we have identified the building.
Burials are another challenge. A secondary goal of the project is to identify the presence of unmarked burials and tombs. The probing and some of our excavations have identified evidence of several previously unknown burials, which can either be identified by the presence of brick vaults, or soil stains that mark where the hole for a grave was dug. We can uncover these carefully, and map the locations of these burials without disturbing any of the human remains beneath.
Through careful and selective excavation, archaeology is uncovering important information about the size, shape, construction, embellishment and use of Norfolk’s borough church, and will add depth to our understanding of Norfolk’s early history, and to the evolution of Virginia’s ecclesiastical architecture.
Thank you. Fascinating work you are doing there at St. Paul’s in Norfolk.