The Kittiewan Grounds
Surrounding, Complementing, and Supporting The Mansion Are The Grounds
No country house is complete without grounds. These are the formal space and the informal space surrounding the Mansion.
To the front of the house toward Kittiwan Creek is a small formal garden arrangement consisting of box bushes, trees, ornamental shrubs and flowers. To the visitor in the 18th and 19th centuries, this would have been the first impression view of the house. The aim was to produce a pleasing view for the visitor and for the people in the house. Two schools of thought were in play. The formalists required a symmetrical layout that essentially showed that humans controlled the environment. The naturalists (Humphrey Repton and Capability Brown) were leaders in a movement that created "entirely natural" settings.
Kittiewan has a somewhat formal front yard. It has a formal garden to the west. However, the very large trees in the wider front and side yards may have elements of a naturalistic landscape. Whereas Repton & Brown moved entire grown trees, in this country, selective thinning would accomplish the same purpose.
The formal garden to the west of the house has flowers and shrubs that bloom at various times of the year which is a normal practice then and now. A herb garden would have been part of the layout. The trees in the yard are a mix of introduced species and nut-bearing trees.
A garden to grow comestible produce was also a feature on the west side of the yard. Every household grew all that it possibly could for the table, for sale of any excess and for winter survival. This would be the standard set of vegetables, carbohydrate producers such as corn and beans, tubers such as white and sweet potatoes, turnips, and greens along with whatever else that particular family desired.
Every plantation household had a set of buildings set aside for specific functions, some set near the house while others were at a good distance from it. Some were for basics processing such as dairies, smokehouses, granaries, etc. Some were for basic animal shelter such as draft horse barns, stables, cow barns, hog houses and pens, chicken houses, etc. These tended to be set at a distance from the house depending upon the species of animal grown and the effects they produced. Hog barns and their yards were never near enough to be smelled. Chicken houses were nearby as eggs had to be gathered daily and the added benefit was that chickens eat ticks and other disease-vectoring malicious bugs. Distances varied by type of building, social mores of the time, possible defensive needs from both human and animal causes, the social standing of the owners, the financial means of the owners and other factors. Spatial archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology that has arisen in the last 30 years to study how these different factors relate to one another, and how they form stereotypical behavior across a social level and how topography influences each.
At Kittiewan, the northwest side of the yard contained the kitchen, office, school, barns and probably house servants quarters. ASV fieldschool excavations have revealed the foundations for the kitchen in a depression off the northeast corner of the east wing.
In the early 20th century, a shed was built to the north of the house, but set back from the formal yard space. This was used as a storage and work area by the Croppers. Mr. Cropper elected to build the visitors center directly north of the house in an open field. This is now the headquarters of the ASV and houses the ASV collections, displays and the Gift Shop.
