Carolyn's Blog

I recently attended a workshop at the John Dickinson Mansion near Dover Delaware which led us through steps to help determine the age of various methods of historic construction and how to detect features that may be hiding in plain sight. One example of this was in the attic of the 18th C. part of the house. We looked at the chimney to see if we could find evidence of an earlier configuration. This is what we found.

 If you look carefully one brick course down and diagonally to the left of the hand, you begin to see a diagonal line of nail holes extending down and to the left.  It turns out that this is where flashing was nailed for an earlier roof. Who knew?  Apparently it went unnoticed until recently, so don't feel badly if you can't see it!

Now we are looking at an example of brickwork on the 1740 section of the house.  It is called Flemish bond and is characterized by alternating the short end or header bricks with the long side, or stretchers. The headers are glazed which means they were fired closer to the heat source, which caused them to glaze over on that end. It produces a decorative effect and was popular in pre-revolutionary high style homes.

John Dickinson was a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware and President of Pennsylvania, and among the wealthiest men in the British American colonies. The mansion was his childhood home, and he returned there in later years. This is the front of the earliest section of the house with 2 wings to the left.  The next picture shows the front of the 1740 section, and then you can see from the back, the 1795 and 1800 smaller additions. The Dickinson Mansion is owned by the State of Delaware and is open to the public.