Westhampton Park

In Fall 2019, Classics 220 Introduction to Archaeology excavated a small area outside Maryland Hall after gardeners encountered intact bottles and ceramic fragments when replacing old plantings. The deposit turned out to be trash of the first decade of the 20th century, dumped along what at that time was a wooded creekbed slope at the back of Westhampton Park. When Maryland Hall was built in the early 1930s, the slope was cut back and retained by a concrete wall; thus, earlier soil strata were preserved behind the retaining wall though the basement of the building reached a much deeper level. With condiment bottles (for Worcestershire sauce and salad dressing), seltzer bottles, glass mugs, and soup bowls, the debris was likely associated with the cafeteria known to have been located in the park, near what is now Boatwright Library.

Artifacts were mended and studied in Summer 2021 by three A&S Summer Research Fellows, Emily Dixon, Danny Saravia Romero, and Lindsey Stevens. Their work is presented in the storymap “Concessions Uncovered: Westhampton Park in Context” (https://tinyurl.com/concessionsuncovered) and was exhibited in Boatwright Library during the Fall 2021 semester.

Full report of the excavation: “WESTHAMPTON PARK IN CONTEXT: REPORT ON THE 2019 EXCAVATION AT MARYLAND HALL,UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND” (2023)

(*Map: WESTHAMPTON PARK RAILWAY COMPANY; GENERAL PLAN FOR WESTHAMPTON PARK; SCALE 100’=1,” United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, georeferenced by Douglas Broome; basemap: World Topographic Map by Esri.)