Huntley: A Mason Family Country HouseWrenn, Tony P.
History
Huntley: A Mason Family Country House
Wrenn, Tony P.
Huntley (Va.)
The building referred to by the present owners as the slave quarters
does not seem to have been suitable for the housing of human beings, and
may actually not have been used for that purpose. It is a one-story
brick structure with a ridge roof over three rooms. Neither of the end
rooms has a finished floor or ceiling nor do they appear ever to have
had finished walls; the windows are wall openings protected by iron
bars; each room has four brick diamond-shaped ventilators and neither
seems to have been heated--in addition to being open, there are no
chimneys or flues. It is likely that both rooms were used for storage
spaces and, from the evidence in existing doors and windows, secure
ones. The overall measurements of the building are approximately
thirty-four feet eight inches by ten feet ten inches, each end room
measuring approximately eleven feet eleven inches by ten feet ten
inches.
The necessary, a privy or outdoor toilet, occupies the central recessed
portion between the two end storage rooms. It measures approximately ten
feet ten inches by five feet five inches, and includes separate men's
and women's sections.
Brick in the structure has an average size of nine inches by four and
one-quarter inches by two and one-quarter inches. The bond is common,
varying from three courses of stretchers to one of headers at the
foundations, to five to one at the gable end. Queen closers are used at
the corners of the structure. The cornice line is three bricks deep,
stepped outward. The bottom and top course are stretchers, while the
middle course is set at an angle in a saw-tooth pattern,[55] the same
cornice as is used on the house.
The structure is symmetrical. Brick ventilators, two in each gable end
and two to the rear of each end section, are worked into the brick wall.
They are in the shape of a flattened diamond, with sixteen headers
eliminated to form the pattern.[56]
To the rear of the structure the roof has been replaced, though the
front part of the ridge is old. This may be accounted for by the fact
that the rear wall is bowed back two or three inches out of plumb. This
may be immediately seen in the joint of the wall dividing the storage
room on the left from the necessary. This shift could have necessitated
the replacement of the roof to the rear.
Hand wrought, rose head nails were used in the construction of the doors
to the necessary; they may have been used for their clenching
properties. The latches are hand wrought, or at least one of the early
fabrications. The left door consists of three vertical boards, from left
to right; nine, ten and eleven inches in width. The center board is
beaded on each side, while the outer boards are undecorated.
Hand wrought rose head nails are also used in the construction of the
barred windows in the front of the storage rooms. Here they are used
structurally, tho the effect is decorative. The bars are iron, and the
original frame and bars remain in the left storage unit window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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