nty-four feet, nine
inches in width. The rooms on the ground floor, overhung by a
colonnade, were in single file with an ell on the north front at the
west end. Only the foundations of the structure remain. The ever-flowing
spring, from which the plantation took its name, is maintained within a
brick enclosure.

"Bacon's Castle," in Surry County, built by Arthur Allen soon after his
arrival in Virginia about 1650, passed to his son, Speaker of the House
of Burgesses, from whom it was seized by Bacon's followers, 1676, and
garrisoned by sympathizers under William Rookings. Bacon is not known to
have visited the house, although, since its eventful occupation by his
followers, the early Allen home has been known by his name. The cluster
chimney is a unique feature of its architecture, as is the gabled end.
The bricks were laid in English bond.

Of the typical frame homes of the seventeenth century, occupied by the
average family, not one remains, which can be dated with authority.
However, from extant descriptions, it is known that these modest homes
for the most part were one-story structures, with a loft above, to which
there was access by means of a ladder-like stairway. Dormer windows,
added in the eighteenth century to some of the homes, made of the loft a
half-story, providing for more comfortable sleeping quarters for the
family. There were chimneys at both ends of these early homes, and meals
were prepared on the open hearth of the larger fireplace. The early
homes apparently had no partitions, but by the middle of the century,
some were divided by one partition on the lower floor. Cellars were not
practical in the low-lying areas, for in wet weather the water-table is
level with the ground. Inland, for the better homes, in the last half of
the century, there were cellars, though some of the more modest
structures merely had unbricked excavations below for storage purposes.
The size of the modest homes varied, in length, between thirty and forty
feet and, in width, between eighteen and twenty feet. In 1679, Major
Thomas Chamberlaine, of Henrico, contracted for a frame house forty by
twenty feet without a cellar. In 1686, Benjamin Branch's brothers built
for him "a home twenty feet long" on the family plantation "Kingsland"
in Henrico.

THE FOREST PRIMEVAL

When the English transported themselves or were transported to Virginia,
they brought with them as much of England as possible in their manners,
their cus