Another largely unremarkable day today as we continued to make progress in trenches 1 and 2, albeit with a satisfying end to the day.

We slogged on all day in Trench 1, continuing to cut a preview slot along one side of it, in order to establish whether the undisurbed rubble deposit continues for its entire length.

We were able to confirm that it does - and so also that it lies beneath the brown deposit at the east end of the trench, which continued to produce all manner of extremely modern material including parts of a bicycle and even fragments of the proverbial kitchen sink.

The story of Trench 1 then seems to be a deposit of palace demolition rubble (circa 1660), filling a very deep feature such as a cellar or perhaps a moat - unfortunately whatever it is is too deep for us to safely excavate fully. Subsequently, likely during the nearby gas main installation in 1967, the ground was disturbed, perhaps by the driving through of an access road for the heavy machinery, and a lorry load of modern builder's rubbish was deposited on top.

As far as our objective of locating the 60s archaeologial trenches goes, this pushes the likely position further west. Whether or not we open another trench further west is yet to be decided.

Things were decidedly more interesting in Trench 2 however, as late in the day we finally began to reveal the anticipated brick floor.

This is the trench that is located next to a wall we saw last year, which had just a small exposure of what looked like a fragmentary brick surface next to it. This trench is intended to reveal more of the surface, and looks like it has begun to deliver the goods. We haven't had time to reveal much of it yet and we also hope to see more of the wall that the floor abuts, in due time.

We also removed topsoil from Trench 3, our other secondary target (see diagram) which we hope will reveal more of the wall junction we saw part of last year. This wall was about a metre deep, so it will be a while before we see any structures in Trench 3.

Not a great deal to report on day three of our 14-day dig on the site of Elsyng Palace.

Not much has changed from yesterday - in Trench 1 we continued to remove the browner deposit at the east end of the trench, that continued to yield a large amount of late 19th and early 20th century rubbish, and it continues to look as if this is overlying the compact layer of mortar and rubble we found at the west end of the trench.

The rubble layer is still very clean of finds and increasingly looks to be an in-situ post-palace demolition deposit and not a backfilled archaeological trench, which we had been looking for.

As the day wore on we cut a preview slot in the rubble and found it to extend to a depth of at least a metre - the last time we encountered a context like this it turned out to be the fill of a palace cellar. We have decided to extend this metre-deep preview slot to the entire length of the trench to confirm that the rubble layer extends that far. We won't be able to safely dig any deeper, but might possibly find an intact palace wall or two lurking in the rubble.

As far as locating the 1960s trenches goes, we may try one more throw of the dice later in the dig, by opening another trench a few metres further west, but that will depend on other factors such as weather and available manpower, and whether or not we do encounter any structures in Trench 1.

Meanwhile in Trench 2, we finished removing the pebble deposit and have begun to dig the brickearth and rubble layer that lies above the wall and possible floor surface that we found a corner of last year.

Hopefully it won't be long before we see our first Tudor wall of the dig - fortunately we know for certain there is one waiting for us in Trench 2!

Day 2 of our summer dig saw more progress in Trench 1 in our hunt for trenches cut in the area in the 1960s. We've identified two distinct deposits in Trench 1 - one is made up mainly of rubble and mortar fragments and is concentrated at the west end of the trench, and the other is a more brown and brickearth rich deposit at the east end of the trench.

Although at first both deposits had appeared to contain a lot of modern material, the twentieth century finds have dried up in the rubble at the west end of the trench, apparently only being in the deposit's upper horizon, but the brown deposit at the east end continued all day to produce all manner of late 19th and early 20th century rubbish, including odds and ends of scrap iron and even a Victorian halfpenny.

Determining the boundary between layers can be very difficult in this arid weather, as everything rapidly dries to a grey powder, so it wasn't clear whether there was an edge between the two layers, perhaps suggesting an ex-trench edge, or as we had begun to suspect, if the brown deposit was overlaying the rubble.

To clarify we therefore cut a small sondage (i.e. a trench within a trench), which confirmed that the rubble layer does indeed lie beneath the brown and may therefore extend to the whole length of the trench.

This shows that the rubble is of an earlier date and the brown layer has been dumped on top, although exactly when we cannot prove yet. It is very likely that the Victorian and later rubbish was imported to the site in the 20th century, either at the end of the 1960s digs or during the subsequent works on the nearby gas main, perhaps to level up uneven ground for heavy machinery to drive on.

The problem this leaves us with is telling whether or not the rubble layer is of similar age, or if it is in fact undisturbed rubble from the demolition of the palace in the 17th century.

We'll probably need to get down a bit deeper to find out, but if it isn't the backfill of an old archaeological trench, we may have to look elsewhere.

Meanwhile we opened Trench 2 on our southern secondary target see diagram which eventually will reveal more of a possible floor surface made of brick fragments in the nearby gatehouse. We've only got as far as topsoil removal here so far.

We got off to a good start today, on the first day of our two week summer dig on the site of Elsyng Palace in the woods of Forty Hall.

As explained in yesterday's post The main objective of this year's dig is to re-locate the exact locations of the complex of trenches dug by the EAS in the early 1960s.

Thus, after setting up the site fencing early this morning, we laid out Trench 1 in the approximate location where we believe the north end of the 60s work took place, with the aim of identifying the 60s trench and hopefully to uncover some of the then-shallowly buried walls that the 60s dig encountered.

It is very early days, and work is fairly slow in the hot weather, not least because the ground has been baked absolutely solid by several weeks of record-breaking temperatures, but we did quickly come down onto deposits that were rich in modern small finds, including late 19th and early 20th century pottery, modern brick fragments and lots of modern glass.

This amount of modern material is slightly surprising, as it must clearly have been imported onto the site to be dumped, and that is not really what we would expect in the backfill of an archaeological trench. It is maybe more likely that this kind of dumping may have come about during the chaotic work to install the nearby gas main in 1967.

The east end of Trench 1 contains much less rubble and if we do have the backfill to a 60s trench we may also in time be able to identify a trench edge.

The most tantalising find of the day, amongst the milk bottle and porcelain fragments, was a small sherd of a South Herts Greyware vessel, likely dating to the second half of the 13th century - a rare clue that the site of Elsyng Palace was occupied probably at least two centuries before Henry VIII was even born!

The site has been cleared, tools stored and the stage is set for our two week summer dig on the site of Elsyng Tudor palace, in the woods of Forty Hall, starting tomorrow.

Having spent the last few years homing in on and eventually locating and studying elements of the inner gatehouse of the palace, our attention has partially turned to a long-outstanding research objective - the re-location of trenches dug by the EAS in the early 1960s.

The first ever archaeological trenches dug in Forty Hall were opened by the EAS, directed by Ivy Drayton, in 1963 and between 1963 and 1965 uncovered a series of substantial palace remains including a staircase turret, various drains and cess pits, fireplaces and some immaculate brickwork foundations extending in some places for a depth of more than two metres.

The main part of the dig took place to the west of the lime tree avenue, although a series of test pits were also excavated within and to the east of the lime tree avenue, which failed to find any significant palace remains.

Unfortunately, most of the written record of those digs has been lost, and although we do have the official photographic record and the site diaries written by Ivy Drayton and her deputy John Adams, neither contains more than a broad indication of precisely where the work was carried out.

Using a handful of blurry slides, the diaries' written descriptions of how the trenches were laid out, and one or two other ephemeral clues, we've narrowed down, give or take a few metres, the most likely position of the trenches to an area just to the west of our newly discovered inner gatehouse.

It is now important to our understanding of the gatehouse, and of the wider palace complex, to pin down precisely where those 60s features are - an important question to answer is whether or not they are part of or separate to the gatehouse.

Thus the first trench of 2026 will be laid out in an area where we suspect the northern end of the 60s trenches lay - this end contained walls that were at the time only a few inches below ground level and so should be quick to identify if they are there. This area also corresponds to some hollows in the ground that could possibly be attributed to settling of backfill over the last several decades.

Depending on the results of the first trench we may lay out one or two further trenches with a similar aim.

Secondary targets will be two trenches enlarging on work we did on the gatehouse last year (lime green in the above diagram). The first will enlarge on a substantial wall we discovered part of in the last couple of days of last year's dig, to determine its full width and to find out if it is a T junction or a corner of a structure. The second will aim to expose more of a feature that we again saw only a glimpse of at the end of last year's dig, which looked as if it might have been the edge of a deliberate surface made of brick fragments.

How far we get with our objectives this year will depend on the whims of this year's hot weather.