The background photo highlights the substantial, and permanent nature of the waterfront premises. The stone foundations and floor are clearly evident.

The star artifact graphic, the ornate cross, is an important and unique artifact from a time of general religious intolerance. It helps emphasizes the religious element of this theme, an element that set this colony apart from others of the period.

Additional inset images feature the forge, an iron lock, and an historical sketch of a smithy. These images provide links to the iron elements recovered from the site, and reinforce the "builder" theme. An inset of the cobble street emphasises the level of development at Ferryland. The portrait and wax seal are visual links to the man himself.

Theme Text
In 1621 Captain Edward Wynne began construction of the Colony of Avalon for George Calvert. In 1627, Calvert, now Lord Baltimore, visited Ferryland with two Catholic priests, one of whom remained through 1629—the first continuous Roman Catholic ministry in British North America. The Charter of Avalon embraced a new idea: religious tolerance, retained in the later Charter of Maryland.

Lord Baltimore settled here in 1628, with 40 family and servants, in the Mansion House that Wynne had built. After the miserable winter of 1628/29, the Calverts departed, satisfied "to commit this place to fishermen".

Cecil Calvert later claimed that his father had spent over £20,000 on the colony (about $4 million today) and archaeology shows that by 1630 the Ferryland waterfront resembled stone-built West Country ports more than the wooden fishing rooms seen elsewhere in Newfoundland.

Star Artifact
Ornate Baroque Cross, Iron and Copper Alloy - The Ferryland Cross attests to the importance of religious practice in the colony, through the 17th century. (CgAf-2: 11947, Smithy roof fall, before 1600-1650.)

Display Case
See Artifact List.

Fragments of Two Slate Sundials - CgAf-2: 413 127254 -5 - Smithy Area, 1620-1700

Iron Nails - CgAf-2: 33100-10 & 33112 - Privy, 1670s

Broad Axe - CgAf-2: 64648, Holman's Fort, date uncertain

Padlock - CgAf-2: 43234, Waterfront 1690s

Key - CgAf-2: 13657, Waterfront, date uncertain

Iron Mattock - CgAf-2: 35944, Waterfront, 1620-167

Edward Wynne, Extracts from a letter to Sir George Calvert, 28 July, 1622. (From Richard Whitbourne, A Discourse and Discovery of New-found-land, [London, 1622].)

Drawer 1

Iron Shovel Edge CgAf-2: 117432, Smithy, 1620-1650

Working Iron - Excavations at the Smithy have recovered tools and hardware made and repaired at the Colony's own forge. Finds from other areas confirm the importance of wrought iron in the work of building the colony.
See Artifact List.

Drawer 2

Furniture Pul CgAf-2: 99223 - Fill over Smithy, 1700-1900

Key to the Colony - Keys, locks and latches remind us that one of the rights of proprietorship was control of space.
See Artifact List.

Drawer 3
Building a Colony - Captain Edward Wynne's letters from Ferryland to his patron, Sir George Calvert, are full of everyday details about the Colony of Avalon in the early 1620s. They were published at the time, with some other letters home, as a promotion for Calvert's colony.

© 1999, Colony of Avalon Foundation.

Revised March 2002.