Out in July 2022; price £20 (plus postage)

Update: now available to order here

This volume (336 Pages; 85 Figures; 74 Plates) is both an historical study and an archaeological report and will be published in July 2022 with generous grants from both the Enfield Society and the National Lottery Heritage Fund/Enfield Council’s Stories of Enfield initiative.

Based on many years of research into original Medieval, and particularly Tudor and later, documents it traces the genesis and development of two Enfield manors and of the large and impressive house and eventually royal palace that lay in one and took its name at least from the other.

It examines in detail the lives of its first successive aristocratic or technocratic owners, the Tiptoft family (including the Earl of Worcester), Sir Thomas Lovell and the Earl of Rutland; and studies the households of the latter two.

From 1539 a royal palace, it charts its fortunes as one of the homes of the future Edward VI and Elizabeth I; then as one of the sovereigns’ stopping points on royal progresses under Elizabeth and James I; and finally as a home for court favourites like the Earl of Montgomery and Pembroke, before the latter bought it from the crown.

It also publishes in detail 16 years of excavations on the outer court of the palace, including the complete excavation of one service range featuring a well preserved sunken furnace, a double moat, garderobe chutes and projecting towers.

Utilising aerial photographic and LiDAR evidence as well as early Tudor inventories it seeks to reconstruct both the palace complex and its wider environs including a large Stuart parterre garden and a partially excavated brick burning clamp.

A full finds report includes usefully stratified pottery groups from the palace’s demolition in c.1660, a group of decorated Frechen Bartmann ware vessels and a range of metal and glass finds as well as building materials and faunal evidence.

An accompanying CD presents and evaluates the previously only briefly published findings of excavations and watching briefs in the 1960s which revealed probable elements of the royal apartments including projecting towers surviving to a considerable height and very large intact palace drains.

The CD also publishes full transcripts of 53 original documents relating to the palace and its residents.

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