250-Year-Old Kiln Discovered on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Estate

Monticello Archaeologists Identify 250-Year-Old Brick Kiln on the East Lawn

A routine infrastructure project has led to a sharper view of Monticello’s earliest building history. Archaeologists working on the East Lawn have identified a disassembled brick kiln that likely dates to Monticello I, the first version of Thomas Jefferson’s house, built between 1768 and 1782.

The kiln was first noticed in 2018, when researchers encountered a layer of brick rubble along the south edge of the East Lawn. Earlier this month, they returned for a more extensive excavation ahead of a planned upgrade to a nearby bus boarding area. What they found was more specific than demolition debris: two uniform brick runs, each two bricks wide, followed by three additional parallel segments with burn evidence between them. Together, the features pointed to a kiln that had been taken apart.

The dating evidence came from the bricks themselves. Three embossed, cyma-shaped bricks and another with ovolo molding matched the forms used for Monticello I’s neoclassical water tables, the architectural band that helps direct rainwater away from a structure’s foundation. That detail matters because Monticello II, renovated between 1796 and 1806 after Jefferson’s years in France, did not include water tables. By then, the style had fallen out of favor.

The kiln adds a more complete account of how the estate was built and rebuilt over time. It also points back to the labor behind the house: enslaved people and indentured workers fired the bricks that made the first Monticello possible. For a site already recognized as the only private residence in the United States designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the discovery deepens the material record rather than simply adding another artifact.

In that sense, the kiln is more than a construction remnant. It is evidence of an early building process, preserved in brick, that helps explain how Monticello’s architecture changed as Jefferson’s ambitions and influences changed with it.