The same red clay was packed in the builder's trench all around the kitchen building. It was also used to span soft depressions resulting from refuse pits dug and filled with trash before the building was erected. For some unexplained reason the kitchen was constructed over an area that previously had been set aside for the burying of domestic refuse. The largest and earliest of the five pits excavated was situated partially beneath the massive kitchen chimney, whose foundation, not surprisingly, had settled into the pit. Another rectangular pit in the middle of the building was not only topped with a pad of red clay but was partially covered by a cap or pier of laid brickbats that perhaps served as a support for floor joists. The presence of the pits sealed beneath the kitchen provided two pieces of information: that the site had been occupied for some time before its construction, and that it was not built before about 1730 or 1740--this on the evidence of a wine bottle found at the bottom of Pit D. If this was the first separate kitchen building erected on the site, it must be assumed that the cooking was originally carried on in one of the first-floor rooms of the residence. However, the fact that the archeological excavations were so limited makes any conjecture of that kind of dubious value. The unusual construction of the kitchen and its situation in the trash area at a skew with the residence might prompt the conclusion that it was built without much consideration for the beauty of the whole. It is probable that the kitchen was erected after the house had ceased to be the residence of the owner or a tenant of the Tutter's Neck acres, and that the dwelling was then a slave quarter. Such a conclusion is supported by the presence in Pits D-F, of numerous fragments of Colono-Indian pottery, a ware produced by Tidewater Indians in pseudo-European forms and probably intended for the use of the slave population. The construction date of the kitchen in the decade 1731-1740 would place it in the ownership of Col. Thomas Bray, who resided at Littletown (see p. 40). Thus the Tutter's Neck residence is at best unlikely to have been any more than the quarters of an overseer, or, at worst, communal housing for slaves working in that area.