A TOWN RECONSTRUCTED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 149, 25 June 1936, Page 6

A TOWN RECONSTRUCTED.

Since 1027 a unique archaeological undertaking has resulted in the English colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, being reconstructed exactly as it was two hundred years ago, even down to the royal arms 011 what was the English Governor's "palace," writes Christopher Hussey in the London "Observer." The word "archaeological" is used advisedly, for, although we regard it as applying rather to excavations at such ancient sites as Ur or Maiden Castle, it is precisely the application of the strict and minute methods of archaeology to a site not three centuries old that gives to this reconstruction its peculiar interest. Williamsburg was the capital of the colony of Virginia from 1099 till the War of Independence in 1779. In the former year one Theodorick Bland, under instructions from the General Assembly, laid out a "noble great street" 99 feet wide and nearly a mile long, in what was known as Bruton Parish in Middle Plantation, between the York and James Rivers. There already existed 011 the site the Colleges of William and Mary, foujided in 1 (>93, and thus next to Harvard in seniority among American universities. And it was the debased remains of this building for which there is strong presumptive evidence that the British Surveyor,-General, Sir Christopher Wren, provided the draft design, that alone survived of the original houses of Williamsburg in 1927.