Another day of fine weather in the woods of Forty Hall today allowed work to continue at a reasonable pace as we approach the halfway point of our two week exploration of the gatehouse of Elsyng Palace.

Most of the day in Trench 2 was spent finishing off defining the outline of the walls of the newly discovered turret and connected facade wall which we think is the face of the inner gatehouse, ready for our visitors tommorow on our public open day.

The interior of the new turret has not been fully excavated yet so we still don't know if it has a brick floor like its sibling but it does seem that the outline is more irregular than it first appeared - it now seems to be octagonal except for one corner which makes a right angle (so technically an irregular heptagon!).

We're planning to extend Trench 2 to reveal the remainder of the turret and also to see how the rest of it is attached to our potential gatehouse building. We've so far identified the building's east and possibly west sides and this might also reveal its south side. We'll probably get started on that tomorrow.

We opened a small extension to Trench 3 this afternoon to better align with the extended wall line of the facade wall in Trench 2 (ie the one that connects the building to the new turret). We've removed most of the overburden but are not deep enough yet to tell whether the wall is present or truncated as it was when we saw part of it last year.

Meanwhile Trench 4 delivered the goods in the form of a long, fairly slender wall apparently crossing the whole trench exactly in the position predicted by the mortar line that was visible on day 3.

This is ostensibly parallel to the facade wall on the front of the gatehouse and so probably represents its back (west) edge. Interestingly, if this is the back edge of the building it would place the octagonal pillar in the cellar that we found last year more or less in the centre.

Work continues in this trench removing the mortar and rubble deposit on its interior side, which we think is the cellar fill. The wall is very damaged in places and it is not clear to what depth it survives, but if it is a cellar wall, it could go down quite a way.