Founded in 1955, the Enfield Archaeological Society is active in carrying out research and fieldwork in and around the London Borough of Enfield, in order to understand and preserve its history.
Our main aims are: to promote the practice and study of archaeology in the district; to record and preserve all finds in the borough and encourage others to allow their finds to be recorded by the Society; and to co-operate with neighbouring societies with similar aims.
Membership is open to anybody with an interest in the past.
The Enfield Archaeological Society is affiliated to the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society; the President for the society is Harvey Sheldon BSc, FSA, FRSA
All members of the society over the age of 16 are welcome to dig with us – no experience is necessary. We typically run at least one dig a year in the summer, on the site of Henry VIII's Elsyng Palace with other work often cropping up through the rest of the year.
The Archaeology of Roman Enfield and its Roadline Settlement
£33.50 inc. p&p (uk delivery only)
A definitive description and analysis of all the known Roman archaeology in the north London borough of Enfield, this monograph brings together antiquarian finds and re-presented and augmented reports on work from the 1950s to 1970s with the more recent excavations of the EAS as well as Museum of London Archaeology.
With prefatory chapters on aspects of the area including its prehistory, the volume documents what is known of the settlement that grew up here alongside Ermine Street, the road itself, a possible tannery, other settlement sites and often higher status burials.
A synthetic chapter examines the role of all small roadside settlements around Londinium in terms of function, chronology and their relationship to the provincial capital and discusses the possible economy of this area of the Lea valley.
With full illustrated stratigraphic and finds reports for over 45 individual sites (including samian ware, brooches, metalwork and important Roman glass finds), it presents the evidence for what may have been a broadly rural landscape, but with a quasi-urban settlement that may have reflected the needs of a cursus publicus system operating along one of the main roads of the province.
355 pages; 137 black and white and colour figures; 19 black and white and colour plates.
The Museum of Enfield is planning its 2019 exhibition:
"Enfield At War: 1939-1945"
July 20 2019 - April 19 2020, Dugdale Centre
We need your help!
Do you have any WWII objects you may wish to loan to us for display for the duration of our exhibition?
Do you have any memories/stories of WWII to share?
Have you got any photos or film of the local area during WWII?
If so, we'd love to hear from you!
Please join us on Saturday 18th May 2019, 11-3pm for our
community day where you also explore our own archives centre too.
Museum staff and local experts will be on hand to talk about your
objects and discuss possible loans. We will also be available to record
oral histories on this day too.
We will also have the Royal Armories Museum, Leeds here to share
their latest research from the Royal Small Arms Factory, displaying
for the first time over 30 photographs of the factory during WWII
This event is FREE to attend
If you are unable to come on the day please contact with us: email
enfield.museum.service@enfield.gov.uk Jan Metcalf 020 8379 4383, Stacey
Bagdi 020 8379 2299
Elsyng Palace c.1540 Documents linked below desribe the buildings to the left of the picture.
The Forty Hall Estate have uploaded a series
of pdfs describing the work we've done since 2014 investigating a service range
belonging to Henry VIII's Elsyng Palace, containing what we now think was the palace "boiling house".
We will be returning to Forty Hall this summer from the 16th to 28th of July
to continue our investigation of Henry VIII's Elsyng Palace.
composite vertical image of the boiling house so far (click to enlarge)
We've spent the last couple of years investigating an area between the south side
of the palace's outer court and what we now know to be part of the extensive
complex of service ranges belonging to the palace kitchens.
Last year's star feature was a complete Tudor furnace belonging to what we
believe to be the palace 'boiling house' - a department within the kitchens
responsible for boiling large joints of meat in preparation for roasting and
other uses including pie-making.
The furnace and associated multi-phase brick floors also played a starring
role in Channel 5's "Digging Up Britain's Past", in which Alex Langlands
helped us to excavate the remains of the ash deposit left behind after the
furnace's last firing, probably some time in the early 17th century.
Earlier in the year we also continued to explore a building adjacent to the
boiling house which defines the south side of the outer courtyard.
Documentary and archaeological evidence suggests this is the 'Long Barn'
-- most likely a storage barn serving the kitchen block and possibly connected
to a small stable at its east end.
The main outstanding question from last year's dig is how far east the boiling
house extends, alongside the barn. We found that part of the brick floors and
the southern facade wall of the boiling house were truncated by a large demolition
cut and so were unable to define the building's eastern limit -- this will be
the main aim of this year's dig.
The first trench (see diagram) will look for the
east side of the demolition cut and a continuation of the boiling house's southern
facade wall (and hopefully more of the interior of the building),
while the second trench (a few metres to the north of the diagram) will pick up
the edge of the barn where it meets the boiling house, and similarly follow it
east. The second trench will also hopefully tell us more about the barn
and hopefully give us a chance to see some of its interior in more detail.
If you would like to dig with us, you must be a member of the Society and over
the age of 16. See here for details on joining.
Please bear in mind the number of places may be limited, so the sooner you join
the better.
Alternatively, the Saturday of the 27th will be a public open day with exhibits
explaining our work and members of the Society will be on hand to answer your
questions.
You can interactively explore some of last years work at sketchfab.
It was with a mixture of regret and relief that this year's dig on the site
of Henry VIII's kitchen ranges of Elsyng palace drew to an end.
We've worked very hard for the last two weeks in sometimes impossible heat
and will be glad of a well earned rest, but we'll leave behind some of the
best preserved palace remains found on the site in more than 50 years.
Over the course of the dig we've pieced together a fascinating and complex
story of the construction, modification, repair and demise of what we think
was the palace boiling house, which has given us one of the most detailed
ever insights into the palace's history and adds to an increasingly detailed
picture of the layout of the palace complex between the outer and inner
courts.
two octagonal towers rapidly emerging in the eleventh hour - the garderobes were just behind the orange fence
One of the compelling aspects of Elsyng has always been its unpredictable
nature. Unlike other showcase palaces, Elsyng was not built to a single
grand plan, and this has always been evident in the archaeology.
Wall alignments are rarely square and building layouts almost never symmetrical,
and just when you think you have a handle on a building's layout,
the smallest trench extension can often throw you a curve-ball.
This year's dig delivered an archetypal surprise yesterday, with the sudden
emergence of the foundations of an octagonal turret in the corner of the
furnace trench, where we expected a simple linear wall connecting to the
twin garderobes a few metres away, which we excavated in 2014/15.
Having established that we'd found a very shallowly buried octagonal turret
and with building time pressure, we deturfed along the top of it, hoping to
simply record its outline before returfing and resuming the task of backfilling
the furnace trench.
a small wall attached to the large turret
The further we went, however, the more complex things became.
The turret turned out to be attached to a second, larger octagon,
making a pair of conjoined turrets (one 1.6m in diameter and the
other 3m), which did eventually return to
a straightforward wall which seems to be on the correct alignment to
join the garderobes.
The final complication came on the last corner of the larger octagon,
where a small wall appears to have been attached to it.
This wall runs very close to the 2014 garderobe trench, which showed no
sign of the new wall so at the moment we have no idea whether this wall
is truncated before it reaches that far, if it turns or even if it is
part of yet another turret.
Sadly we ran out of time to investigate any more of these features this year,
so having planned and drawn their tops, they were returfed and the rest of
the day was spent backfilling.
Post-excavation work begins now - one of the first tasks will be to put
all of these new features together with the complete layout of the
furnace that we now have, onto a single plan which may make it easier
to get an understanding of the building's layout and development.
As ever, results of this year's work will eventually be summarised in
future editions of the Society newsletter. We are now also making progress
on the preparation of a comprehensive publication of all the work undertaken
on Elsyng since 1963, together with an extensive study of the available
documentary evidence (for example the will of Sir Thomas Lovell -
available to read here).
Though the furnace is now covered and the trench slowly disappearing from
view, you can still explore it online here:
A big thankyou is owed to our members who stuck it out through the harsh
weather, and especially to those of you who came to help backfilling,
most of all the dedicated band who were able to stick with it to the end
of the day.
Without your hard work and dedication, Elsyng would still be a 'lost palace'.
The return of high temperatures and harsh sunshine made for hard work
in the grounds of Forty Hall today, which was the penultimate day of
this year's dig on the site of Henry VIII's Elsyng Palace.
Spirits were high, however, thanks in no small part to the almost
unprecedented amount of superbly preserved Tudor palace structures
we've uncovered in the course of the last ten days.
recording the fully excavated furnace and flue
Today was our big open day, and we had a steady stream of visitors all
day, as we finished excavating the ash fill of the furnace and its flue,
and also the adjacent area of the furnace's ash pit and the peculiar
cupboard next to it.
The furnace is the defining feature of this trench and we think it was
intended to heat water in a large copper cauldron suspended above,
and supported by the substantial superstructure which is now missing
but has left tell tale signs around it.
We now think that the bricks between the furnace and the external wall
(left of picture) are not a floor,
but probably the base of a thick wall inserted between the wall and the
furnace, to stabilise and support it. The brick piers to either side of the flue neck,
which we think served as the base of an arched and possibly domed opening
to the furnace also show signs of remodelling - as mentioned yesterday
this alteration appears to have left two rectangular voids either side
of the furnace mouth.
heat damaged and partly truncated floor next to the cupboard alcove (left) and edge of ash pit (not visible; to right)
The floor of the furnace, once it was uncovered, also showed signs of
repair near the neck of the flue - not surprising given the extreme
heat and wear it would have been subjected to.
In the part of the trench opposite the flue, we removed the last of the ash
deposit next to last year's ash pit - we think that as the furnace went out
of use, the ash pit ceased to be regularly emptied and began to overflow,
leaving a skim of ash over a wide area.
The ash came off to reveal another brick floor, partly truncated
and very heavily heat damaged - inevitable given its location near
the furnace and ash pit.
the obligatory unexpected feature - an octagonal turret
True to tradition, Elsyng wouldn't be Elsyng without a last minute spanner
thrown into the works, and the extension we opened yesterday which should
have revealed a simple straight wall has, as we suspected yesterday
afternoon, revealed the base of what is almost certainly a large octagonal
tower projecting from the building's south facade wall.
It didn't end there, though, because as we de-turfed along the outline
of the turret, we went on to find that there is yet another feature
attached to one corner - this one is circular and curves in a similar
direction to the octagon.
Our working hypothesis is that the octagonal tower,
likely a staircase, serving the room next door to the furnace,
is the first of two or more phases; the circular feature perhaps being
similar tower superseding the first.
the turret (background) projects from the external wall (left-right; foreground)
We hope to have time at least to define the outlines of these features
before the end of the dig - they are luckily only beneath the turf -
but we really are running out of time for this year's dig.
Tomorrow will be spent almost exclusively on surveying, drawing and
photography, and then backfilling begins in earnest.
We backfilled most of trench two with our multi-phased floors today
but you can still see them at sketchfab
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