Little Bay Cotton Warehouse/Structure 1

Overview

The Little Bay Plantation site is the core area of what was once an extensive plantation extending well beyond the current boundaries of the site. Currently owned by the Montserrat National Trust, Little Bay Plantation is preserved as a park within an area being developed as the new capital for Montserrat.  Massive construction projects have been undertaken on three sides of the site; to the east and north there are new roads, to the west, a huge cricket pitch, and directly adjacent to the northern edge of the site, a new national museum.  The museum houses the offices and collections of the Montserrat National Trust, which has sponsored several seasons of archaeological investigation at the Little Bay Plantation site.

Archaeological excavations were conducted at Little Bay Plantation between 2005 and 2007 and again between 2010 and 2014. Excavation data provided through the DAACS website only features work conducted by Dr. Mary Beaudry, Dr. Lydia Pulsipher, Dr. Mac Goodwin, and Dr. Barbara Heath between March 2006 and March 2007.  During this time, Beaudry and Pulsipher identified Structure 1, a likely warehouse for cotton, located near the ruins of a cattle mill (Structure 2) and boiling house and cistern.  Structure 1 was originally identified as a Curing House (and is sometimes referred to in preliminary as the Curing House) and others have suggested the building was a warehouse related to a later lime juice industry.  Regardless, its architectural remains and location in relationship to the rest of the sugar works suggest that it was not related to sugar production.

Documentary Evidence

Robert Piper obtained the title to a parcel of land known as Carr’s Little Bay Plantation near the northern tip of Montserrat sometime between 1710 and 1712 and renamed it Little Bay Plantation. Robert Piper was described in a 1729 census as a “Planter and Cooper” with a house and plantation, a household of nine members, and owner of 39 enslaved men, women, and children. His real estate included a cattle mill and three houses—a boiling house and still, a curing house, and a dwelling house—and 100 acres of land with thirty-six acres planted in cane and four in cotton. The nine people in Piper’s household included Robert and his wife Jane, their sons Christopher, Robert, Jr., William, and John and daughters Elizabeth and Sarah, and a “White Man Servant.”

In his will, written about a year before his death in 1740, Robert Piper left all of his real estate to his four sons and their lawful heirs, but the sons soon divided the property among themselves.  William and John, the younger sons, retained the Little Bay Plantation.  William died in 1762 without heirs, leaving the plantation to his brother John, who survived him for five years before his own death; also childless, John willed the plantation to his nephew Robert Piper.  In the ensuing years two Piper cousins, Hugh Allen Piper and John Hugh Allen, contested ownership of the property.  It is unclear who among these three was living on the plantation when the planter’s dwelling house burned to the ground in 1783.  The plantation was abandoned after the fire and never reoccupied, although in the 19th and 20th centuries the area was planted in cotton and sometime in the 19th century stones and bricks from the 18th-century plantation structures were robbed and reused in the construction of a cotton warehouse just northeast of the former sugar works.

Currently there are no known primary documents or plats associated with the Cotton Warehouse (Structure 1).

Excavation history, methods, and procedures

In March 2006, a .5-x-.5 meter test unit was placed at the entrance (west side) to the Cotton Warehouse/Structure 1. This unit was later expanded to a 1 x .5 meter unit.  Both units did not reach subsoil. All sediment was dry screened through ¼ inch hardware cloth. The effort in 2006 revealed that the warehouse probably had a cobblestone floor and a step or two built of stone and yellow brick.

In 2011, first Mac Goodwin, then Beaudry and Pecoraro divided the interior of Structure 1 into quadrants and excavated two of the quadrants down to sterile. Please note: These 2011 archaeological contexts and their associated artifacts were not available for entry into DAACS, therefore they are not part of the assemblage available through this website.

Research and analysis

Originally identified by Pulsipher as a “Curing House”, the building identification was later revised by Beaudry to be the Cotton Warehouse associated with nineteenth-century cotton production at the estate.  At the time of this revision, all buildings investigated at Little Bay were given more ambiguous “structure” names; the cotton warehouse is also known as “Structure 1”.

Several lines of evidence suggested the structure was a cotton warehouse, not a curing house.  First,  no drains or other hydraulic features one would expect in a curing house were uncovered, nor were any remains of drip jars or other industrial sugar wares found. Second, oral history from Lady Eudora Fergus, whose family acquired the property in the 19th century and grew cotton on it into the 20th century, seems to confirm that Structure 1 was a cotton warehouse, not a curing house. Finally, the portion of the site where a curing house would logically have been placed, below the boiling house, has been destroyed by the construction of a cricket pitch.  Jessica Striebel MacLean turned up a number of additional structural features during testing in advance of construction of a museum & other buildings right on the edge of the protected area of the site.  Although the exact function of these buildings have not yet been identified, they appear to more closely related to the sugar-production era of Little Bay plantation.

DAACS calculated a Mean Ceramic Date of 1808 for the thirteen datable ceramic sherds recovered from the 2006 test pits. The Chronology page provides additional details on the unit’s date.

Although the field records and artifact assemblage from the 2011 excavations at the warehouse were not available to DAACS, Beaudry concluded in personal correspondence that the artifacts from the 2011 warehouse units contained artifacts dating to the nineteenth century and included a cassava grater.  The Warehouse’s (Structure 1) masonry included much recycled yellow and other bricks and stones that appeared to have been robbed from Structure 6, a huge unidentified foundation in the “manor house complex”.  Beaudry reported that Structure 6 was beautifully constructed, with some of the fire debris from the burning of the manor house thrown into its”cellar”.  Beaudry concluded that Structure 6 was already in ruin when the Manor House burned as there are ceramic cross mends between the warehouse “cellar” contents and the Manor House cellar.  She believes Structure 6’s masonry was later taken to use in the construction of Structure 1, the cotton warehouse.