Fredericksburg Sunken Road
— a stone wall that held a December afternoon.
Not only on a wall.
Fredericksburg Sunken Road, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A short stretch of farm lane at the foot of Marye's Heights, with a four-foot stone wall along its inside edge. On December 13, 1862, Confederate infantry stood four ranks deep behind that wall and threw back fourteen Union charges across the open plain below. The Union army lost about 8,000 men on that field in an afternoon. The road is quiet now, walked from the National Park Service visitor centre off Lafayette Boulevard. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Sunken Road runs along the eastern foot of Marye's Heights on the western edge of Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was a worn farm lane bordered by a four-foot stone retaining wall on its town-facing side. On December 13, 1862, during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate infantry from Lafayette McLaws's division held the road behind that wall and repulsed fourteen successive Union assaults across the open ground below. The site is preserved by Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, established in 1927.
Most of the wall along the road today is reconstructed. A short original segment survives near the Innis House, the small frame dwelling that stood through the battle and still carries bullet damage in its interior walls. The wall is field-stacked rubble of local sandstone and quartzite, about four feet high, mortared. The lane behind it is the original cut, lower than the surrounding ground by roughly three feet, which gave the defenders a natural rifle pit beneath the wall's stone lip.
The Sunken Road is reached on foot from the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center at 1013 Lafayette Boulevard. There is no entrance fee. A short interpretive trail of roughly half a mile follows the road past the Innis House and the Kirkland Monument, which honours Sergeant Richard Kirkland, the South Carolina infantryman who carried water to wounded Union soldiers on the field. The visitor centre is typically open daily, with shorter winter hours. The cemetery on Marye's Heights above the road holds over 15,000 Union dead.
