Digging went well today in the cooler weather in the shelter of the woods by Forty Hall's lime tree avenue, as the pace of work also begins to slow.

Today we finished recording most of the structural features in Trench 1 and by late afternoon we covered the walls on the south side of the trench in sieved topsoil to protect them, and then made a start at partially backfilling the cellar with some of the vast quantity of brick and tile that we so painstakingly removed from it last week.

The last remaining task in Trench 1 was, with permission of Historic England, who paid us a welcome visit in the late morning, to remove the baulk between Trench 1 and 2, to get a better understanding of the wall in the north east corner of the trench - see today's diagram

What we found was that the wall, forming the cellar's eastern side, was of a slightly complex construction, comprising a single row of bricks (in stretcher bond) on the inside face, followed by a narrow rubble and mortar fill in the middle, and a more substantial wall (in English bond) on the exterior face (supported by the clunch raft foundation we found yesterday which included a recycled stone block).

A possible explanation for this is that the thin interior skin of bricks and rubble core behind it extend to the base of the cellar, while the thicker wall and its clunch foundation were set higher up, to support the building above - see this schematic diagram.

There's more work to do on this wall before we can be sure this is the case; most importantly we don't know yet how deep the clunch foundation on the wall's exterior side extends downwards.

Meanwhile we worked on the related section of wall in Trench 5, which ought to be a continuation of the wall in the join between Trenches 1 and 2 (see diagram).

We've exposed a short stretch of it but haven't got it across the whole trench yet. We don't know yet if that's because it's demolished to a lower level or some other reason. There is also a suspicious collection of horizontally-lying brick fragments perpendicular to the wall line, which may or may not prove to be more structure.

Small finds have continued to be pretty scarce, but while we were removing the T1/2 baulk we did find some rather nice fragments of carved stone, possibly more fireplace fragments similar to those we found last year albeit not nearly as large.

As well as bearing traces of soot blackening, and the always-evocative toolmarks of the Tudor Master Mason, one piece also had a Mason's mark in the form of an arrow (see picture below).

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