Anne Arundel County's Lost Towns Project began excavations on Lot 87 in the spring of 1996. Preliminary archival research suggested that shipwright Edward Rumney and his successor, merchant Stephen West, Sr., operated a tavern on Lot 87, overlooking Scott Street to the east and the South River to the north. Rumney most likely built a tavern on this lot in the 1690s, where it remained in operation into the second quarter of the 18th century. In November 1709, Anne Arundel County Court granted Rumney a license to operate a tavern in London. Land records place Rumney at London as early as the 1690s where he may have worked as boatbuilder. An application for a ferry license made by Rumney 1712 included the following description:

"Edward Rumney has, at great expense and great care and pain, got a good and decent habitation at London Town convenient for the traveler" (1712 Ferry License Application).

So far, The Lost Towns Project team has excavated more than fifty 5 ft x 5 ft units on Lot 87, exposing a complicated series of postholes and molds, remnants of the earthfast building that once stood on the site, and a partial earthen cellar. The cellar filled completely with silt and trash after it, and perhaps the structure above, were abandoned. The team has excavated two-thirds of the cellar, removing one layer, or stratum, at a time. The "layer cake," or stratigraphy, within the cellar resulted from natural filling (siltation) and deliberate trash disposal. Each stratum differs from those above and below in color, texture, and types of artifacts.

The artifacts, bones, and oyster shells represent typical tavern trash accumulated over two or three decades. The lowest layers consist of silt and ash, containing few artifacts. The dense layer of trash lying on top of the silts probably was deposited by the tavern keepers between 1710 and 1715, as they threw breakage and sweepings into the cellar. Another layer of waterborne silt with few artifacts separated the lower trash lens from the upper trash lens (c.1725-1730s), which was in turn capped by silt.

The cellar beneath Rumney's Tavern was a simple affair, a large, square, earthen hole used to store food and supplies. The fill yielded an impressive collection of colonial tavern trash, plates, cups, bowls, bottles, and bones, that provide direct evidence of what life was like for London's colonial visitors and residents.

The glass vessels, largely mendable, include table glass, cylindrical and case bottles, and pharmaceutical vials. This elegant and fragile glass assemblage suggests an elite tavern that served merchants, wealthy planters, naval officers, and supercargoes. The tavern's ceramic assemblage also suggests an elite clientele. Expensive porcelain and delftware ceramics constitute two-thirds of the ceramic assemblage, including teawares. What would the artifacts from a more mundane London Town tavern look like, a tavern catering to sailors, small farmers, and tradesmen? Several taverns operated in town at any one time, and The Lost Towns Project team might find one of them!

Learn more about

The Lost Town of London
The Lord Mayor's House

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