A Large Brick Kitchen
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Chesapeake planters moved the preparation and cooking of food from their homes to a separate structure. Thus, the odors, noise and heat from cooking were eliminated from the main house. Most importantly, separate kitchens reduced the chances of fires in the dwelling house. This move also represented the emerging racial lines of chattel slavery in the late 1600s.
Sidebar: The plantation kitchen was second only to the dwelling house in importance. The cook and other slaves labored long hours preparing the plantation’s three main meals under the mistress’ supervision. Open-hearth cooking was an art with cranes for moving iron pots in and out of the flames. Holiday meals or special dinners would have taken weeks of preparations.
An 1870 description of this property listed “a large brick kitchen” as one of Richard Lee’s outbuildings. This solid structure contained a brick chimney and contrasted with the simple frame or hewn log plantation kitchens of colonial Virginia. Earlier models had archaic smoke bays or crude wooden chimneys. The Lee’s kitchen consisted of a main floor, root cellar and loft. Richard Lee owned a 65 year-old female slave who cooked for the family and more than likely lived in this building.
Marker can be reached from Yorktown Road (Virginia Route 238), on the left when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
