In recent weeks a 20th century garage at the bottom of Barney Street was demolished to make way for a new home. Any time there is digging in the colonial part of town, Newport Historical Society staff like to look in the hole, ditch or trench. Both we, and the property owner, were surprised to discover a curved stone wall on one side of this trench. With the property owner’s permission, two archeologists from Brown University came down on their own time to document and explore the feature.
This wall represents a section of a circular cistern made of brick and coated, or parged, with red clay to make it water-tight. The bricks, and the small objects in the fill around the cistern, seem to date to the second-half of the 18th century.
The presence of a cistern right near the iconic Newport spring is logical, and in fact there are several such features running up Barney and Sherman streets (following the water source). This one seems too large to have been for personal use. It sits right up against the corner of a foundation (can be seen in the photo), and the relationships indicate that the structure was built around and after the cistern.
The possibilities for the original use of the cistern are numerous, and it may be hard to pin down what it actually was. The location, near to the original site of the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House and right across the street from Touro Synagogue, is intriguing. Kudos to the property owner, who has paused his work to allow these limited explorations to take place.