To uncover the remnants of the past, you have to place yourself in the mindset of these intrepid early settlers. Determining their priorities helps define what there should be to look for and what could possibly have survived almost 400 years of growth and change. For John Guy and his fellow English settlers in 1610, one of the top priorities would have been to dig a cellar to help store, protect and preserve their precious supplies.

The cellar pit that Bill Gilbert and his team uncovered in 1995 measured approximately 20 feet wide and seven feet deep. The thick base layers of the cellar’s stone walls are clearly visible on the site today and provide a telling window of the dimensions of domestic life in the frontier of 1610. Establishing this crucial structure enabled the settlers to concentrate on the construction of two additional buildings, one of which was the homestead.

Over the four hundred years since John Guy established his plantation in Cupids, the ravages of time and nature have long taken a toll on all the structures he built. As with any building of the time the structures that invariably survived any catastrophe were the chimney and fireplace. And that is precisely what was found in the exploration of the site in 1995. It was located just west of the edge of where the cellar was discovered and was fairly large measuring about 11 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Uncovering the heart of the homestead literally meant that you have found the homestead. The chimney and fireplace lay at the southern end of an approximately 13 foot wide dwelling house that extended for 36 feet. Exploration of remnants of the dwelling’s floor indicated that the house was divided into two main rooms: one with a cobblestone and flagstone floor and another with a wooden floor.

The archaeology team also discovered an additional structure attached to the southern end of homestead. This remnants of this third building measured 30 feet in length and roughly 13 feet in width. The condition of this third structure was almost entirely lost when the buildings collapsed, a portion of its foundation was still visible. The archaeological team determined that its location in relation to the cellar meant that it was probably a store house.

In 2003 the archaeological team working at the Cupids dig site uncovered a two foot wide stone wall that appears to have formed part of the boundary of John Guy’s 1610 enclosure was found at the north end of the site. Facing Cupids’ harbour, the wall did not cover the complete northern boundary of the site, leading to speculation that this was actually the unfinished replacement of an earlier wooden wall that was vulnerable to the threat of pirates in the early settlement period.

Some late season housekeeping on the archaeological site in 2007 uncovered an astounding find. Moving a stack of wood to bury some leaves that had fallen over the site revealed the top of what would turn out to be a headstone! A six-foot high, early 18th century headstone. Further excavation the next summer would reveal that this original find was actually part of a larger cemetery, containing at least nine graves. The narrow width of three of these graves indicated that they were dug in the 17th century. Though too early to state categorically, there is a strong probability that this is the cemetery established by John Guy’s party in 1610. If this proves to be the case, then it is the oldest English cemetery in Canada.

From the work of the archaeological team and the artifacts and relics they uncovered, we know that the plantation site was occupied for approximately 50 years. From these same artifacts it was determined that a catastrophic fire destroyed several of the original plantation structures in about 1660. Though dating to artifacts found indicate settlement in the area continued, the momentum of settlement was taken up by other established settlements along the northeast Avalon Peninsula. The plantation site itself was thought to have met a violent end, where it is speculated that marauding French raiders destroyed the buildings during its infamous raids in the winter of 1696-1697.

In the fifteen years since the original John Guy homestead was discovered, over 150,000 artifacts have been found including the oldest English coin ever found in Canada: an Elizabethan silver fourpence minted in the Tower of London sometime between December 1560 and October 1561. Undoubtedly future digs shall reveal even more of this treasure from our past. Check out our News & Events section for updates.

Photography by Dennis Minty for the Cupids 400 Photo Bank.