Courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources
Denbigh Plantation Site was first known as Mathews Manor. The original house was built for Captain Samuel Mathews ca. 1626. The house burned in 1650 and was replaced with a smaller house, probably by his son, Samuel Mathews Jr, who served as the governor of Colonial Virginia (1656-1660). The site has been referred to as Denbigh since the 1700s. Sometime after the property was purchased by the Digges family.
The site is significant because it represents one of the few intact sites of houses from the first half century of settlement in Virginia to be excavated. The site includes a 1600s industrial site and the archeological remains of the Digges family. The foundations of the Digges and Mathews houses have been capped and their outlines delineated. An dairy from the 1700s and a kitchen from the early 1800s still stand on the property. The site generated much archeological interest because some of the earliest known porcelain ceramics in Virginia were recovered during excavations.
Denbigh Plantation is within the Plantations' Neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 16, 1990 and the Virginia Landmarks Register on December 2, 1969. For more information please vist:Plantation's Neighborhood or call: 888-493-7386
Last updated: August 16, 2017