This simple brick structure is possibly a unique example of a decorated outbuilding built solely to serve as a root cellar. It is believed to have been erected sometime after 1768 when William Wessels acquired the Accomack County property and erected a house for himself. Wessels’s home burned in 1937, but Wessels Root Cellar survived and continues to serve its original function. Most colonial root cellars were contained within the foundations of other buildings; this example is unusual for being freestanding and for having its gable decorated with a pattern of glazed-header bricks.