Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

SIZES OF COLONIAL LOTS
April 12, 1938

The act under which the city of Williamsburg was established and laid out in 1699 was called "An act directing the building the Capitoll and City of Williamsburg." Under this act, Theodorick Bland was named surveyor and a group of trustees were appointed to hold title to the land.

The Theodorick Bland Survey of 1699 is still on record in the Public Records Office, London, and a photostat of this first basic survey is available in the Research Department. After the survey was completed, the town was "regularly laid out," under the direction of the Trustees for building the Capitol and city of Williamsburg. Streets and greens were set aside and the remaining area was divided into half acre lots. The unit used in the Bland survey was the pole (16½ feet), a unit which is readily divisible into acres. The lots on the great street, or Duke of Gloucester Street, were five poles (82½ feet) wide and contained one-half acre of 217,800 ^21,700square feet, which gave each lot a depth of 264 feet. This lot depth corresponds to the distance between Duke of Gloucester Street line, and the line of Nicholson Street.

The next step is the development of the city plan was in the numbering of each lot and the recording of the lot numbers on the plan kept in the County Clerk's Office. At least five examples of the Williamsburg lot number plans survive and copies of these are also available in photostat or blue print form. Deeds were recorded in the office of the County Clerks of York County or James City County and such records frequently referred to the lots by number. 2 Almost without exception a lot was called a "half acre or portion of ground." Provisions were made that to hold title to the lots the proprietors had to enclose the "Said lots or half acres with a wall, pails, or post and rails," and buildings had to be erected within twenty-four months. Among the provisions of the complete act were:

OCTOBER 1705--4th ANNE

	XXVII. Provided always, That the building of one house be the dimensions thereof never so large, shall not save more than two lots, or half acres, on the great street; and that whatever lots, or half acres more, the builder is willing to take a grant of, shall be taken backwards.
Lots, when to be inclosed	XXVIII. And be it further enacted, That every person having any lots, or half acres of land, contiguous to the great street, shall inclose the said lots, or half acres, with a wall, pails, or post and rails, within six months after the building, which the law requires to be erected thereupon, shall be finished, upon penalty of forfeiting and paying five shillings a month for every lot or half acres, so long as the same shall remain without a wall, pails, or rails, as aforesaid: To be recovered before any justice of the peace of York or James City county, upon the complaint of any one of the trustees or directors, and to be disposed of by the directors as they shall think fit, for the use and benefit of the said city and ports thereunto belonging.
Proviso as to lots formerly laid out	XXIX. And be it further enacted, but the authority aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, That none of the lots, or half acres of land in the city of Williamsburg, whereon any houses were standing, at the laying out of the said city, shall vest in the said feoffees and trustees of the said city, to be disposed of, as the rest of the lots, and half acres may be, by virtue of the said act, made at a general assembly begun at James City, the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousant six hundred ninety-nine, intitutled, An act directing the building the capitol, and the city of Williamsburg; but that all and every of the said lots and half acres, shall remain and continue the proper estate of the respective proprietors unaltered by the said act, and so shall be adjudged, deemed, and taken; any thing in the said act to the contrary, or seeming to the contrary, notwithstanding.

(Hening's Statutes at Large, Vol. 3, p. 430)

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The boundaries were well defined and law suits over encroachments as small as six inches occurred. Encroachments upon the public street or over an adjoining neighbor's line were not permitted as long as the capitol remained in Williamsburg. And, although some colonial lots were sub-divided in the eighteenth century, the majority of such divisions occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even allowing for changes brought about by the sub-division of properties the present-day lot lines very frequently have an old established line for at least one boundary.

The York records, which contain deeds to all Williamsburg property recorded there between 1699 and 1813, substantiates that lots were regarded as units containing a half acre, having 82½ feet front. In instances where sub-divisions occurred the units were referred to as "portions or dividends of lots."

In the case of colonial lot #48, on which the printing office stood, the above sources indicate that it contained 82½ front feet. Its boundaries were described in one deed dated June 14, 1751:

...the printing office and lot which is denoted in the plan of the city of Williamsburg by the figures 48, and is bounded on the South by the Duke of Gloucester Street, on the North by Nicholson Street, on the East by the lot of Mr. John Holt, and on the West by the lot of Mrs. Sarah Packe with the appurtenances... (Book V - Deeds, York County, Virginia)

Prior deeds refer to the lot by number, and not until William Hunter on June 10, 1777, gave his mother a life interest in a portion of the lot, were any sub-divisions of it recorded. On all the town plans after that date lots 47 and 48 are marked "Hunter." After they were sold by Hunter's estate in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the lots were subdivided many 4 times. A present-day plat of colonial lot #48 includes property traceable to three parcels, but none of them were separate in the eighteenth century.