Denbigh Plantation, also known as Mathews Manor, is a historic archaeological site located at Newport News, Virginia.
The earliest owner of land in this area is known to be merchant Abraham Peirsey (who first came to Virginia in 1616 aboard the ship Susan), and died in 16 January 1628.
The post-medieval half-timbered Mathews Manor included a projecting porch and center chimney, both characteristic of Virginia's earliest substantial dwellings.
In 1680, the Virginia House of Burgesses created a port town at the convergence of the Warwick River and Deep Creek.
[8] Property owners in Warwick Town included William Digges and Richard Young, who operated a tavern there.
[6] The Digges family sold the 2700-acre plantation to a Mr. (Richard or John) Young in 1810, the same year a new Warwick Town courthouse was built near the main road.
Mr. Young later divided the area into four properties, keeping the one called Denbigh for himself, and naming the other three Quarterfield, Horse Point, and Reedy Branch, and giving them to his children.
[17] In 1869, the area previously known as Warwick Town, now a 300-acre farm, was sold to by the Youngs to Hudson and Sallie Mench, who operated a sawmill here for 50 years.
[19] A George and Betty Young were living in the separate kitchen and dairy house of the prior mansion in 1935, and died without children.
Colonial Williamsburg's renowned archeologist Ivor Noël Hume excavated the Denbigh Plantation Site during the 1960s.
The foundations of both the Digges and Mathews houses have been capped and delineate their outlines, one with a historical marker in a small park at 10 Blacksmythe Lane.