Digging continued but the pace began to wind down today as we begin to move into the recording and backfilling phase of the dig.

High temperatures also taxed our hard working diggers, who had mostly backfilled the main body of Trench 4 by the early afternoon.

Trench 4 had originally been intended to explore the deep rubble 'cellar' fill that we found during last year's dig but failed to find it, and so an extension was laid out on day 8 to push back very close to the location of the pillar we found last year in the cellar fill, on the theory that the pillar may have been a reinforcement for the back wall of the cellar, rather than a free-standing support in the middle of it as we had supposed.

That theory appears to have been validated today, as the cut of the cellar fill, and eventually a brick wall, emerged in exactly the right spot for such a back edge to the cellar (meaning the cellar is a fair bit smaller than we'd originally thought).

Meanwhile one final trench extension was opened to Trench 2, to reveal a little more of the south west corner of the new polygonal turret (under the pictured blue tarpaulin) and potentially pick up the junction of the wall with the back edge wall of the internal cellar, which we had freshly confirmed in Trench 4.

We progressed fairly quickly down onto the wall and by late afternoon had confirmed the cellar wall does join it where expected, albeit at a much higher level. There's a little more work to do revealing and defining these wall lines, and there may be a hint of yet another wall springing off of the gatehouses southern external side, but that has yet to be confirmed.

Today's star finds came from the rubble deposit immediately covering the gatehouse's southern wall, in the form of several fragments of carved stone of various sizes and some fitting together - the most notable being several joining fragments of a Tudor arch. Judging from the burning visible on several of the fragments we think this is most likely the remains of a fireplace.

Tomorrow our focus will continue to move from digging to recording and backfilling. In terms of palace structure we've probably revealed about as much as we can this year, which has been some of the most extensive and high quality building work we've seen in the past 20 years.