{"id":1576,"slug":"historic-london-town-and-gardens-edgewater-maryland","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["London Town is the port that archaeology had to find — the 1683 Act for Advancement of Trade town on the South River, Anne Arundel's county seat before Annapolis took it, the tobacco port where the trans-Atlantic ships loaded before sailing to England. Two hundred people, the ferries and the taverns and the staymakers, all fading as the travel routes shifted until the town was gone by 1800.","The almshouse came next — the county bought the land in the 1820s and used it for the poor until 1965, William Brown's 1760 brick tavern surviving as the women's dormitory. The archaeologists started digging in the sixties and found the whole town under the ground — the lost town of Maryland mapped out in postholes and ceramics, the port that legislated itself into existence and dug itself back out.","The file keeps London Town: the 1683 tobacco port, the almshouse century, the William Brown house, and the archaeology that found it.","London Town is the archive's lost-town file — the colonial port under the ground and the almshouse that covered it."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["London Town is the archive's lost-town file — the 1683 tobacco port and the archaeology that recovered it.","A town under the ground keeps its postholes — the file's suggestion being that London Town's hold is the rediscovery: the port that faded to an almshouse field and the digs that found the whole colonial town still down there."]}],"name":"Historic London Town and Gardens","aliases":[],"type":"FORMER_TOWN","type_label":"Former Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Archaeology investigates a lost colonial settlement along the South River.","full_desc":"Historic London Town and Gardens is a former town in Edgewater, Maryland. Archaeology investigates a lost colonial settlement along the South River. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Edgewater","county":null,"state":"Maryland","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.939653,"lon":-76.551401,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery record. Coordinates, earliest legend source, independent history and current visitor rules require further verification.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":49.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Archaeology investigates a lost colonial settlement along the South River. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The press recorded it; the detail stands as reported history. The detail is preserved in 'Historic London Town'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Historic London Town","url":"https://www.visitannapolis.org/plan/landmarks-and-neighborhoods/historic-london-town/","publisher":"Visit Annapolis","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Historic London Town","url":"https://www.visitannapolis.org/plan/landmarks-and-neighborhoods/historic-london-town/","publisher":"Visit Annapolis","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Londontowne, Maryland","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londontowne%2C_Maryland","desc":"Former census-designated place in Maryland, United States","extract":"Londontowne is an unincorporated area and former census-designated place (CDP) in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States, and the site of a former colonial seaport founded on the South River in 1683. The population was 7,595 at the 2000 census. At the 2010 census, the area was delineated as the Edgewater CDP.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Anne_Arundel_County_Maryland_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Londontowne_Highlighted.svg/330px-Anne_Arundel_County_Maryland_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Londontowne_Highlighted.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":68,"lat":38.93611111,"lon":-76.55416667},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}