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Anthony Hay Shop (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Block 28, Area D)

Site History

The Anthony Hay Cabinetmaking Shop is a reconstructed 18th-century structure located in the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg. In the 18th century, the property was the location of a cabinetmaker’s shop. Anthony Hay worked as a cabinetmaker in Williamsburg between 1751 and 1767. Beginning in 1756, he worked from a shop located adjacent to his house on Nicholson Street. Between 1767 and his death in 1770, Hay became a tavernkeeper at the Raleigh Tavern. He rented his shop to cabinetmaker Benjamin Bucktrout and then to Edmund Dickinson.

Archaeological Investigations

The first archaeological excavation at this site occurred in 1949 under the direction of James M. Knight. Mr. Knight employed cross trenching in order to locate brick foundations and did not conduct stratigraphic excavations.

Ivor Noël Hume directed excavations at the site in 1959, with the intent of securing dating information for structures on the property, establishing colonial grade levels, and recovering artifacts that would help positively identify the function of the site. Traces of three structures were located: a shop built sometime between 1745 and 1756, with a westerly addition dating to the 1760s, an early 18th-century frame residence whose basement was partially cut into the bank north of Nicholson Street, and a kitchen behind the house that appears to date as late as the 1780s. In addition, a brick-lined well was found east of the kitchen.

Due to a small stream running through the property (the cabinetmaking shop was built over the streambed), the damp/waterlogged nature of some of the archaeological deposits from the site preserved many pieces of wood and other organic materials. Fragments of unfinished furniture, like walnut chair legs and crest rails, a fragment of a boxwood oboe, as well as more mundane objects like paddles for dairying and fence posts were among the wooden objects preserved in the waterlogged soils. Woodworking tools, including augers, punches, rasps, chisels, files and gouges, were also found in the streambed area.

The cabinetmaking shop appears to have been demolished by 1782, since it does not show up on the Frenchman's Map.

References

Noël Hume, Ivor

1961   The Anthony Hay Site. Block 28, Area D. Colonial Lots 263 and 264. Report on Archaeological Excavations of 1959-1960. Volume I, April 1961. Electronic resource accessed May 5, 2026 at https://digitalcollections.colonialwilliamsburg.org/asset-management/2RERYD4F3P73?&WS=SearchResults&Flat=FP.

Noël Hume, Ivor

1971   Williamsburg Cabinetmakers; The Archaeological Evidence. Colonial Williamsburg Archaeological Series No. 6. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA.

(Edited from Frank 1969 and Noël Hume 1971)