Where else can you work with historic ruins, 3-D models, artifacts, and drones? For the seventh year in a row, Fairfield Foundation is teaming up with Adventures in Preservation to host enthusiastic and curious preservationists who want to learn how to excavate, document, and preserve our past. The week-long experience (August 12 to 18, 2018) […]
Preserving Fairfield from the Ground Up!
Last week we hosted our second Adventures in Preservation (AiP) workshop of 2017 and made great progress at Fairfield Plantation. We opened a new excavation block on the south end of the house foundation, and continued work around a collapsed chimney that we’ve been excavating for the past two summers. The AiP participants (aka “Jammers”) started […]
My First Field Week Experience with Fairfield: Evelyn Ayala
The following is a guest blog written by Fairfield Foundation volunteer and Adventures in Preservation workshop participant Evelyn Ayala, detailing her adventures during her first week of archaeological excavation and preservation work. With the help of Adventures in Preservation, I spent a five-day week excavating and learning with the Fairfield Foundation. I’ll admit I was […]
Another Fairfield Adventure In Preservation!
When people first think about the Fairfield Foundation, they typically think about our archaeology programs, our public outreach, or perhaps our future home: the Center for Archaeology, Preservation and Education (CAPE). But there is something else you should know about us. We love architectural history, too! We love old gas stations (obviously), old houses, and […]
Come Help us Rebuild Fairfield, One Brick at a Time
One of the most frequent questions we hear about our research at Fairfield Plantation is “Are you going to rebuild the house?” This is an excellent question, and one that has us dreaming of the day that this magnificent brick manor house might stand yet again as a testament to both the Burwell family and […]
AiP Workshop Builds a Better Future for Fairfield’s Foundations
Our third year of working with Adventures in Preservation brought about our most successful workshop yet! The mix of archaeology, architecture, and architectural conservation resulted in new discoveries, new friends, and a new model for our work preserving the Fairfield manor house. Over five fast days (and a half day behind the scenes tour of Colonial Williamsburg), […]
Why preserve Fairfield? And how?
The northeast facade of the Fairfield manor house, as it looked shortly before it burned in 1897 (image courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society). Why are you preserving these old foundations? We get questions like this a lot, and they are good questions. Why do we take remnants of the past, whether bits of paper, […]
Bricks and Mortar: Using archaeology and preservation to save the past
Chocolate and Peanut Butter. Peanut Butter and Chocolate. These are undeniably two great things that go great together. The same should be true of archaeology and architectural conservation. Excavations frequently uncover the material remains of long lost buildings and landscape features, while these same architectural elements often inform our understanding of the past through their […]
Adventures in Plastering!
Thanks to a flurry of activity at the Edge Hill Service Station last week, the on-going restoration efforts for the 1930s Texaco station are building momentum! The Fairfield Foundation, in partnership with Adventures in Preservation (http://adventuresinpreservation.org/), held an extremely successful plaster workshop from August 27-August 31, with the goal of repairing some of the interior […]
Help Us Plaster at the Pumps! August 27 – 31, 2012
The Fairfield Foundation is teaming up once again with Adventures in Preservation to recruit a team of volunteers to do hands-on restoration work at the 1930 Texaco Station in Gloucester, Virginia the week of August 26, 2012. Work this year will focus on plastering of interior walls. This marks 2012’s major preservation task on the station’s interior, bringing […]
