💡 Digging into the cellar, part 3

Finding refuge, permanence and timelessness

Hello from Maryland. In the comments from last week’s post,

Priya Iyer

observed that, while she’s never lived in a house with a cellar, she has an awareness through dreams of “the vast, powerful forces in the unconscious.” Several of you reflected on frightened fascinations with childhood cellars, often those of our grandparents. That connection to ancestors continues in today’s post. (Links to the full series are at the bottom of this post.)

Our second installment of “Talking Back to Walden” considered how trees teach us to let go and let be. If you missed it, you can read it here. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

Last week, we reviewed the cellar’s etymology and its role in the birth-death-rebirth cycle. Carl Jung weighed in with the cellar as the seat of the unconscious. Today, we’ll dig into its associations with refuge, permanence, persistence, memory, self-sufficiency, and revealing layers of the past. Enjoy!

The need for refuge is a primitive drive that we moderns, in our cushy homes and offices, rarely credit. Despite its associations with death and burial, the earthy underground transforms into a safe place during a crisis. Think of Ukrainians huddling in the Kyiv subway during Russian bombardment, or Londoners sheltering in the Underground during the Blitz. Or home bomb shelters popularized during the 1950’s fear of nuclear annihilation.

Cellars, too, can be places of refuge in a pinch. Their association with death reverses, as it becomes more dangerous to remain in the above-ground world. Dorothy’s parents throw open the cellar door to climb beneath their house in “The Wizard of Oz.” In the novel, Winter’s Tale, the hero Peter Lake takes refuge in a cellar the night before a climactic encounter with his enemies.

“Everything had come apart, and the world was gray rain. With an even harder road ahead than he thought, he fell asleep clutching straw between his fingers, content to be alone in a warm and dirty cellar.”¹

The section of Bramante’s Tempietto reveals the axis mundi connecting heaven through earth and down to the sacred site of St. Peter’s crucifixion. The earth is excavated to be as close as possible to the actual, and symbolic, place. (from Stierlin, Encyclopedia of World Architecture, p.22)

Its association with origins and with immortality allows the cellar to represent a kind of timelessness, to endure far longer than other parts of the house, and to signify an intention to permanence. These themes appear throughout literature. In the children’s book, The Root Cellar, the heroine is transported 100 years back in time when she wanders down into an old root cellar. The wooden flap doors on rusty hinges lead to earthen steps—a portal between the girl’s unhappy life and a fascinating, adventure-filled place in the distant past.²

Cellar door at Graeme Park, from this website

Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum follows little Oscar, who decides that he will no long grow and instead remain forever three years old. To give adults a “rational” reason for his non-growth, he throws himself down the cellar stairs. Not only the fall itself, but the time-defying place into which he falls, will guarantee his permanent childhood.³

In C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian, the characters have returned to the magical land of Narnia, which they find treasures intact in the cellar of a ruined castle. This leads them to recall a past life they led there, and to realize that it’s now over 100 years later.⁴

The cellars must have been among the very first structures in Winchelsea, from about 1290, from this website

Concern for permanence has a practical dimension. Medieval vaulted cellars were built of sturdy stone to create fireproof storage for important household goods. These contrasted with the more fragile timber framing of the house above.

In American colonial times, the cellar was a symbol of persistence. By violating the ground plane to dig the cellar, settlers both claimed and committed to that place. Williamsburg, Virginia was founded as an intentionally permanent settlement, to be the capital of the colonies. Codes stipulated the size, materials and setbacks of the houses, which included cellars. By contrast, temporary housing built by colonists elsewhere had no cellars.

Overall image of excavated Governor’s Palace cellar. Courtesy Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, from this website.

This solidity and long duration make the cellar an ideal repository for personal and cultural memory, both for the artifacts stored there and as a physical reminder of past ages. Rykwert observes:

“Since men have abandoned nomad existence . . . they have buried their past under their buildings. As each successive layer is added to the next, so another piece of the past is added to the stock of memories. . . .”⁵

Pennsylvania cellar, from Upton and Vlach, Common Places, p..35.

Cave cellars of early Pennsylvania settlers allowed families some measure of self-sufficiency. The family garden produced a surplus to be preserved for colder months. The cellar must keep food fresh and protect from extremes of temperature, not to mention curious animals. Cellars contained barrels or jugs of cider, vinegar, wine, beer. Meats that didn’t stay in the smokehouse were bagged to keep out insects and hung in the cellar. Some families had secret storage compartments beneath a layer of brick flooring to hide their savings.⁶

Thomas Jefferson’s plans for Monticello, c. 1772. Top: main level. Bottom: cellars.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello elevated this storage function to a personal and poetic level. Cellars beneath the north and south terrace walks housed carriage and horse stalls, an icehouse, laundry rooms, a smoke room, dairy, kitchen, and quarters for enslaved people.⁷ The cellars beneath the house itself were reserved for higher-status storage: wine and beer, rum, cider, and wares. The center cellar directly below the Entrance Hall was reserved for the all-important Museum Room, which housed personal mementos, including a paintbox, drawing instruments, plans of Monticello, and two chess sets.⁸

Houses in Vienna contain wine cellars so far underground as to connect with the old Roman foundations of the city, including its aqueducts. Going down to the cellar literally involves entering the past. Rome, the Eternal City, is rich with such palimpsests. Many churches are built on the foundations of older places of worship, including St. Clement’s and St. Peter’s.

Section and plan showing a world hidden beneath the grand basilia of St. Peter’s in Rome, containing a necropolis and the crypt of Old St. Peter’s, from this website

Modern architect Rafael Moneo’s design for the National Museum of Roman Antiquities in Merida, Spain provides imaginative connections to a real, yet mythologized Roman history. Here, the ruins of a city are presented as the foundation of the museum, indeed, its cellar.

Architect Rafael Moneo’s National Museum of Roman Antiquities in Merida, Spain, 1986. The building interweaves modern arches inspired by Roman aqueducts with the old Roman city grid, and reveals fragments of the past at the lowest level.

In Paris, Antoine Le Pautre’s Hotel de Beauvais is a 17^th century house built on a site formerly occupied by three medieval houses. The old foundation walls became the cellars of the new house, spaces that tell stories about its past. Compare the chaotic plans of the old houses with the idealized, rational plan of the new one. Can you see the place where Le Pautre allowed the old foundations to suggest the shapes of the new room above?

Left: drawing of Hôtel de Beauvais medieval foundations by M. Du Seigneur, from La construction moderne, 1886. Right: Plan of first floor (main level above ground floor entrance). Print by J. Marot, from Blondel, Architecture Françoise, 1752] FN Berger, Robert W. Antoine LePautre. New York: New York University Press, 1969, plate 49 and 48, respectively]

Next week, we’ll continue our excavations and discover the cellar’s role in connecting to shadowy realms beyond the known world. Can cellars be way stations on the Hero’s Journey?

We have a chat going to share memorable cellars from literature, film or painting. To that, I’ve just added these questions: Have you ever sheltered in a cellar? If so, from what?

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. It’s always the highlight of my week.

Read installments of “Digging into the cellar” here:

• Introduction

• Part 2: Where we encounter deep time, birth, death, and a return to origins

• Part 4: Leaving the known world behind

• Part 5: Cosmos, chaos, walls and stairs

• Part 6: Social hierarchy and the unconscious

• Part 7: Knowing and transforming our darkness

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Read past installments of “Digging into the cellar” here:

• Introduction

• Part 2: Where we encounter deep time, birth, death, and a return to origins

1. Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale (New York: Pocket Books, 1983), p.191.

2. Janet Lund, The Root Cellar (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1981)

3. Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), pp.60-62.

4. C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: the Return to Narnia (New York: MacMillan Publ. Co., Inc., 1951), pp.13-25.

5. Joseph Rykwert, “One Way of Thinking ABout a House,” in The Necessity of Artifice (New York: Rizzoli Interrnational, 1982), p.86.

6. Amos Long, Jr., “Pennsylvania Cave and Ground Cellars,” Pennsylvania Folklife, 11, No.2 (Fall 1960), pp.37-39.

7. After too long, the historic house museum has finally stopped calling these “servants’ quarters,” and begun to humanize enslaved people by telling their stories.

8. Frederick D. Nichols and James A. Bear, Jr., Monticello (Monticello, Virginia: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1967), p.49.