Uncovering the Hidden History of Williamsburg’s Magazine

In 1933 and 1934, archaeologists excavated the Magazine's interior, its brickwork, and the perimeter wall. Additional excavations in 1948 focused on the nearby guardhouse. From 2021 to 2023, the Colonial Williamsburg Department of Archaeology returned to the site searching for new insights into the Magazine’s past.

Benefitting from techniques unavailable to earlier excavators, archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to map the surrounding landscape. This tool also helped them to find and excavate a long-forgotten burial site from the Civil War era containing the remains of three soldiers. DNA and isotope analysis provided more information about these individuals and their identities.

Recent excavations focused on features other than brickwork. Archaeologists have discovered, for example, evidence possibly indicating the existence of a wooden flagpole on the site in the first half of the eighteenth century. Posts in the ground, planting holes for trees and shrubs, fence lines, and other evidence reveal how occupants modified the building’s unusual, and somewhat impractical, design through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, surrounding postholes suggest that wooden additions were built around the base of the structure to provide more covered area when the building was used as a Market House after the Revolution.

“Traditionally when you build a magazine,” says Colonial Williamsburg Archaeologist Eric Schweickart, “your main goal is to keep it from blowing up.” Since they stored gunpowder, other eighteenth-century Magazines were designed to limit fire danger, with thick walls, clay tile roofs, and more.

But in Williamsburg? “It is very strange that it didn’t explode,” says Schweickart. While many Magazines used copper locks and keys, which don’t produce sparks, archaeologists found an iron key at the Williamsburg Magazine site. They even discovered small pits with iron clippings, indicating that the colony’s armourer was performing iron repair work at the Magazine. If any rules prohibited smoking around the gunpowder, they were ignored. Archaeologists found numerous tobacco pipes around the Magazine courtyard, perhaps smoked by bored guardsmen stationed at the Magazine during the French and Indian War.

As Colonial Williamsburg sought to return the Magazine to its original eighteenth-century appearance, one of the most pressing questions involved windows. The original windows were gone, and many of the window openings had been lost over time. Early photography of the building and recent physical investigations provided crucial information about the original window and door openings. Photographs captured an original lunette window at the building’s front, which had been removed in the 1930s.

What was in those window openings? Archaeologists discovered small diamond glass panes as well as lead casing, called “cames.” One lead came bore a manufacturer’s mark of “1746,” indicating that casement windows continued to be used in the Magazine after that date. The totality of evidence suggests that the Magazine had casement windows for most of the eighteenth century, even as sash windows were becoming more popular in Britain and Virginia.

In 2025, Shirley & Richard Roberts Associate Director of Architectural Research Jennifer Wilkoski and Architectural Preservation and Research Associate Tessa Honeycutt have examined and studied surviving examples of eighteenth-century casement windows in North America and England. Using these comparable examples, the Architectural Preservation team are designing new casement windows for the Magazine that will more accurately reflect the building’s original appearance.

As part of the recent work to restore the Magazine to its eighteenth-century appearance, Colonial Williamsburg’s Conservation department has also revisited the arms and objects stored inside the building. Many of the early guns held in Colonial Williamsburg’s collection were authentic eighteenth-century firearms, like those that would have been used during the revolutionary war. Visitors to the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area once used these guns for firing demonstrations, creating corrosion and instability. After reproductions replaced these firearms for demonstrations in the 1980s, many were displayed in the Magazine for decades with little additional conservation work.

With the Magazine closed to visitors for archaeology and preservation work, Assistant Conservator of Arms and Mechanical Arts Isabelle Lobley treated dozens of these firearms to ensure that they remain stable for decades to come, and preparing them for reinstallation when the Magazine reopens.“These are museum objects that have been repeatedly exposed to explosive force,” says Lobley, “It’s no wonder they have so much wear and tear.”