We had an interesting and enjoyable weekend in Broomfield Park at the start of our two-weekend exploration of what may be an undocumented ornamental canal behind the remains of the house.

Broomfield is known for the remains of its early eighteenth century water gardens, but it is also known from early mapping that these gardens were once more extensive and included several channels and ponds within the park, most of which were filled in probably in the early twentieth century.

Twentieth century aerial photographic evidence and geophysics surveys in the late 1990s suggest there was once also a water channel behind the house, but since it does not feature on any known map, it is hypothesised that this may be a relic of an early Baroque water garden close to the house that had already disappeared by the 19th century.

Archaeologists dug two small test pits on the 'canal' feature in 1997 and tentatively identified its western and eastern banks, but many unanswered questions remain. We have therefore been invited, as part of the Unlocking Broomfield project, to investigate this feature over the course of two weekends, to try and understand how big the canal was, when and how it was constructed, how it was supplied with water and when it might have been filled in.

We therefore laid out Trench 1 on Saturday to get a complete section across the canal. Locating the trench was made easy by the fact that the line of the canal is very clearly shown on the ground by a band of dark green grass, about 6 metres wide running roughly parallel with the back of the house. After removing turf and topsoil we came very quickly, at both ends of the trench, to the expected compacted pebble surfaces that define the west and east banks of the canal.

The banks of the channel are fairly irregular and don't show any evidence of revetment - a fairly simple and cheap construction method which would also have served to provide a gravel path on either side of the canal.

The gravel bank forming the east side of the channel notably had been laid on top of a bed of orange sand. The 1997 test pits had recorded a bed of mortar, so it is possible that our sand layer was originally mortar, but decades of exposure to the water in the canal may have leached out the lime component leaving behind only the sand.

Between the two gravel banks we found a series of quite shallow deposits mostly composed of pebbles, brickearth and fragments of brick, and a notable layer of brickearth that appears to have been applied as a capping layer over the top, probably when the canal went out of use. It is this brickearth deposit that is causing the soil above it to retain moisture in dry weather, in contrast to the gravel banks, and so giving rise to the dark green grass above that causes the canal's location to stand out so well in the lawn.

Having removed these deposits, on Sunday we found the base of the channel, represented by a completely sterile natural brickearth, only about 40cm below modern ground level.

Although this is slightly unexpected, it isn't perhaps entirely surprising since, especially from the point of view of an ornamental garden, a body of water one foot deep looks pretty much the same as one six feet deep, especially from a distance.

This combined with the relatively rough construction of the gravel banks perhaps also shows that whoever built this feature didn't want to spend too much money on it!

One main outstanding question about the canal is the date of construction. Although we did recover quite a number of finds over the weekend, principally of 19th and 20th century date, they were all associated with the infilling of the canal, rather than its creation. Thus the best we can say at the moment is that the feature went out of use probably in the late 19th or early 20th century, and may not have existed for very long.

The story isn't over, however, since we will be back in the park next weekend from the 3rd to the 5th May to open one more small trench nearby. Trench 2 will be located at the apparent northern end of the canal at the point where it may have been supplied with water (perhaps from a culvert).

We'll be keeping our fingers crossed that Trench 2 will supply us with some evidence for the canal's actual construction. The Saturday will be a public open day, with displays and activities for families, and opportunities for volunteers to join in the dig (over 16s only and subject to numbers).

For more background on the dig and answers to frequently asked questions see: The dig pdf

This year's dig on the site of Elsyng Palace in Forty Hall has been confirmed for July 6th-20th. We will be revisiting the turreted gatehouse of the palace's inner court, exploring elements of its interior structure, and will also be making an attempt to re-locate elements of the trenches which first put Elsyng back on the map in 1963-66.

Please note that places on this dig may be limited - if you are not already a member of the Society and want to join us on this dig, the deadline for application is June 20th.

There is also a community dig planned in Broomfield Park, Palmers Green, provisionally scheduled to start April 26th. Further details to follow hopefully soon.

A composite 3D model of the gatehouse turrets excavated in 2023 and 2024:

Tudor Gatehouse Turrets (Composite) by enfarchsoc on Sketchfab

It was the final day of digging today on day 13 of our 14 day investigation of the inner gatehouse of Elsyng Palace.

Trench 2, our only remaining open trench, was thoroughly cleaned for detailed photography and fully planned by about lunchtime.

We then followed that up with methodical photgraphs of all the exposed vertical wall elevations.

There are many different walls in Trench 2 of many different phases representing multiple modifications, insertions and demolitions over its centuries long use and precisely describing and explaining them all will be a long task in post-excavation.

All the recording work was completed together with a comprehensive photographic survey by about 2pm after which we switched over to the unglamourous task of backfilling.

Backfilling is now the only remaining task and we hope to finish up tomorrow perhaps by about lunchtime.

A summary and eventually a report on the findings of the dig will as usual appear in future editions of Society News.

We'd like to thank our hard working members who made this dig possible and perhaps our most productive in terms of high status structure discovery since 1967. Understanding the location and layout of the inner gatehouse has been a years long effort that will go a long way to advancing our understanding of the layout of the palace, especially that of the inner court which remains largely unexplored and hidden in increasingly inpenetrable woodland.

We are also very grateful once again to Forty Hall Farm and Capel Manor College for the provision of tool storage space and the generous loan of wheelbarrows which has made our job much easier than it might have been!

Work continued at a reduced pace today as the intense July heat finally arrived and sapped our already tired digging team's energy over the course of the afternoon.

The number of digging jobs has dwindled and backfilling continued in Trench 4 and began in Trench 3, leaving only Trench 2 active.

We finished exposing the foundation course of the wall that connects the two gatehouse turrets, and followed it to the corner of last year's turret.

The foundations here do not follow the above angular turret but are square and project from the corner (redundantly) quite a way. We think this is probably because when the foundations were laid a decision on the final shape of the turret had not yet been made.

Meanwhile the final digging task continued in the last extension to Trench 2, which was opened to follow the line of the southern facade wall of the gatehouse from our newly discovered turret, and potentially examine its junction with the internal cellar wall we confirmed the location of yesterday.

We found that wall today in the expected position as well as a continuation of the facade wall, but its interpretation and chronology is complex since there are several butt-joints at this junction, and the cellar partition wall is more substantial than it was when we found it yesterday less than 2 metres away - roughly 10cm thicker. Furthermore there seems to be a wall continuing on the same line as the cellar wall running south into the section.

There's still a little more digging to do before it is all cleaned up and a proper interpretation made.

Yesterday digging in this spot produced numerous fragments of carved stonework including several high quality pieces that joined together to make a fragment of a Tudor arch.

The stone fragments continued to emerge today including more fragments of burning which so far have led us to believe that the stonework may be from a fireplace.

Today's star find, perhaps the star of the dig so far, was another large chunk of finely carved stone this time notable for the scratches across its flat face that on close inspection turned out to be deliberate graffiti.

There are two clearly visible capital E letters and a larger probable C. Elsewhere on the surface are much harder to see marks that might be an I or J and possibly an H. One of the Es and the C may also contain residual traces of paint.

Hopefully post excavation work will reveal more!

Tomorrow the residual digging jobs will probably be wrapped up quite quickly and we'll make a big push to fully record the turrets and connecting masonry in Trench 2 before moving over to the not insubstantial task of backfilling the trench.