It was a hot and laborious afternoon's work in Trench 1 today as our diggers slogged away at removing the considerable amount of rubble and mortar that dominates the trench.

Their efforts were rewarded, however, with not one but two substantial Tudor palace walls, first in the south east and then in the south western corners of the trench (see today's schematic diagram).

Together with the wall in the corner of Trench 2 and a line of very solid mortar and rubble crossing the northern side of Trench 1, these seem to form a roughly square enclosure which contains our very deep mortar rich rubble fill.

The sheer depth and quantity of rubble and mortar in Trench 1 is now making us wonder if we have found another cellar or perhaps a staircase tower with an underground room at its base.

We're still uncertain about the northern side of the feature, defined at the moment by a line of very solid mortar and rubble - it's unclear currently whether there's a surviving wall line here or whether it's been robbed out.

The most notable feature of the surviving walls in Trench 1, other than their substantial size and high quality of construction, is the fact that their interior faces are immaculately rendered, some fragments of which even bear traces of white paint or whitewash.

If this feature is a staircase tower, we might expect to find the base of a central pier in the middle of the trench, such as was found in a similar structure in 1964. It would also be nice to find the floor level of this room, but as in the cellar we dug in 2024, there is a limit to how deeply we can safely excavate, especially with such a loose and sandy mortar matrix, which make section collapse a significant danger.

Tomorrow we'll continue removing as much rubble as we safely can, and look more closely at the solid rubble/mortar line to see if it does resolve into a fourth wall for our new palace room.

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