With two months to go until the first of this year's digs on the site of Elsyng Palace in Forty Hall, we're working hard on our project to document the history of the site and compile a comprehensive report on all the archaeological work undertaken there since 1963.

Much has previously been written about Elsyng, but very often with reference to second hand and incomplete sources. For the first time, we are aiming to write a complete history of the site with, where possible, reference to original documents.

Our documentary research so far has already revealed previously unknown aspects of the site's history as well as overturning some long held theories on the Palace's structure.

It will be some time before our report is available, but in the meantime we will be sharing transcripts and extracts from the original documents as we come by them.

These will be listed on the main Elsyng project page.

The first document, published today, is a transcription of the will of Sir Thomas Lovell, K.G.

We will be carrying out two main digs this year on the site of Elsyng Tudor Palace:

First from Monday 28th of May to the 3rd of June, and then again on the same site from the 11th to the 22nd of July.

We will be continuing to uncover the exceptionally well preserved remains of the palace bakery and hoping to find more intact floor surfaces and perhaps even more of the amazing bread ovens we found last year.

If you would like to dig with us you'll need to join the society.

Some frequently asked questions about digging with us are available here.

If you missed last year's dig, you can explore some of last year's trenches below!

See more of our models at SketchFab

Discover Edmonton and All Saints Church, on Saturday 28th October 2017.

You are invited to join with the Monumental Brass Society at their meeting looking at the history, monuments and personalities of Edmonton and All Saints Church this October. It should be a very interesting afternoon with blue guide Howard Medwell talking on “Edmonton through the ages” as well as talks on the history of the church, the monuments it contains and Charles Lamb who is buried in the churchyard. The newly restored tower will be open for those who wish to climb up. The afternoon will end with tea and cakes and is free to all, no need to book.

All Saints Church at 65, Church St, Edmonton, N9 9AT will be open from 12 midday, with the meeting starting at 2pm.

Today was the last day of our summer dig, and although we spent most of the day recording and backfilling our trenches, the little digging we did do revealed one of the nicest palace features seen on the site in fifty years.

The trench extension in the south east corner of trench 2 was finished, revealing the beautifully preserved base of a circular bread oven, with the remains of the original Tudor kitchen floor in front, and within it, a skim of soot and ash from the last time the oven was fired, at least 360 years ago.

We now think this oven is probably a later replacement to the thoroughly robbed-out one we found nearby on day 9, and this likely explains why the rubble of the other oven was so coarse and included so many complete bricks.

Unlike the demolished features elsewhere, the earlier oven was probably demolished during the palace's lifetime, when it was decomissioned and the replacement we found today built.

Interestingly, the construction of the newer oven is a mixture of brick and tile - the western half of the exposed wall of the oven (bottom of first 2 pics) being brick and the rest entirely made up of tiles.

Tudor bread ovens worked by setting a fire in the main alcove, and then raking the hot ashes into a pit below. The dough was then placed in the upper part, the oven structure retaining enough heat to bake it. Tiles were used in ovens because they are thinner than brick and so absorb heat quickly and more thoroughly.

Our ovens and the associated well worn kitchen floor are an exteremely evocative piece of archaeology and a significant discovery in the understanding of Henry VIII's palace, since this is the first time it has been possible to put a definite function to an excavated structure.

It may now be possible to make deductions as to the likely layout of nearby palace elements, since kitchens were never built very far from the main hall and dining rooms in a palace.

The hard work of post-excavation now starts, to make sense of all the complex stratigraphy and multi-phased structures this dig disovered. A full summary of the work will appear in the society newsletter in due course.

A huge thank you is owed to all our members who made this year's dig possible, especially those who stuck through to backfill despite the threat of torrential rain (which we just barely missed!)

Torrential rain and thunderstorms severely hampered work today, which was mostly confined to planning and some photography and finishing excavation in the two trench extensions we opened yesterday.

The extension that revealed the line of edge-lain roof tiles yesterday is now fully excavated, and revealed a heavily damaged area of edge-lain bricks in front of a skim of ash and rubble.

The evidence is strongly pointing to this being a thoroughly demolished bread oven, a theory that gained more weight as the other extension to the east began to expose a curved brick feature.

We think this may be the base of a more intact oven, with a semicircular front projecting into our brick floored room - the continuation of the floor we found yesterday runs in front of this feature and, as with the first oven the bricks in the floor here appear to be slightly blackened and burnt, which may be evidence of hot ashes being raked out of the oven onto the floor.

We've extended so far south now, we should be approaching the line of the substantial southern facade wall of the building we first found in 2014, so if these are ovens they probably had associated chimneys set in this external wall.

Being able to define the function of a building in this way is extremely exciting and a first for the site, and will go a long way to interpreting the arrangement of the palace complex - a key goal of our long term research project.

As excavation has slowed so has the rate of finds, although we're still being drowned in stoneware jug fragments, including one nice decorated medallion bearing the arms of Amsterdam (pictured).

Unfortunately the bad weather meant we didn't see as many visitors as we often do on the open day of the dig. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow and offer one last chance for people to catch a glimpse of our kitchen - there is still a fair amount of trench recording to do and our second oven must be fully excavated and recorded so that it can be backfilled together with the rest of the site by the end of the day.