By 1710, London Town was a well-sized town for the Chesapeake region. The combined needs of travelers using the “colonial I-95” that passed through London Town, sailors and mariners from the trans-Atlantic vessels anchored in the South River, as well as local inhabitants meant that money could be made by the individuals operating the inns, ordinaries, and taverns (public houses) in London Town.

In 1709, Edward Rumney, Sr., sensing that there was enough business to support his establishment and the other three or four already operating in London Town, received an ordinary license from the Anne Arundel County Court. As the following court record indicates that he had to spend quite a bit of money to meet the demands of travelers and local residents.

"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).

By 1720, Stephen West, Sr. had begun to occupy and operate the ordinary that Edward Rumney had built. West, who also operated a ferry across the South River, stayed on lot 87 until his death in 1752. As this October 18, 1753 Maryland Gazette advertisement makes clear, after West, William Brown rented the land and buildings once operated by West to use as his dwelling, as an ordinary, and for his carpentry business.

Excavations on Lot 87

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, then Stephen West, Sr., then William Brown operated a public house on Lot 87, overlooking Scott Street to the east and the South River to the north.

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 an earthen cellar. The cellar filled completely with silt and trash after it, and perhaps the structure above, were abandoned. The team has excavated the entire 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 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 between 1720 and 1725, as Stephen West 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 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.