Tanya,
    Your mysterious pit sounds very much like the cistern I uncovered at the Wayside in Concord, Mass. many years ago.  Constructed by Bronson Alcott in the late 1840s-early 1850s (? construction date based on contemporary records that I no longer remember), the feature was rectangular in shape, and was brick-lined with a brick floor.  When we uncovered the cistern we found that it had been completely filled with hundreds of broken and entire wine bottles that turned out to have been discarded by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Not only did a review of Hawthorne's correspondence reveal that he was in the habit of ordering his publishers, Tichnor and Fields in Boston to send him large quantities of a variety of wines, but we were also able to determine that the owners of the Wayside after Hawthorne were all avowed tee-totalers having signed pledges they would never consume alcohol. 

Dedie Snow