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Pinney House-Survey and Excavation of a Plantation House

The main focus of our work on Nevis has been at Mountravers, owned by the Pinney family of Bristol from early in the eighteenth century to 1818, when it was sold to Edward Huggins.

Pinney’s house was a replacement of two older houses. The first of these dates from before c.1680 and was of ‘post in the ground’ or ‘earthfast’ construction. This means that the house was built using substantial posts, which were set in to the ground to form the main frame. The evidence for this comes from four post holes representing the east side wall and one post hole of the west side, of a house c.20ft wide.

This was succeeded by a house with stone walls, cellared on the downhill side, and which we now know to be the Freeman family home of c.1680. One internal feature must have been decorated with blue and white delft wall tiles.

The third house on the site was that which replaced the Freeman house. Excavation has shown that this was roughly square in plan, two rooms wide and two rooms deep. Excavations in 2003 provided further evidence that the uphill or east half of this house was possibly demolished when the much larger three-storey range was built to the north in the early nineteenth century.

The fourth and fifth phases of building were the construction of the counting house, from c.1785, and the construction for Huggins of the three-storey range to the north.

Anna Deeks drawing in the cellar area of Pinney’s House

Page updated: January 2nd, 2005