Work continued at a reduced pace today as the intense July heat finally arrived and sapped our already tired digging team's energy over the course of the afternoon.

The number of digging jobs has dwindled and backfilling continued in Trench 4 and began in Trench 3, leaving only Trench 2 active.

We finished exposing the foundation course of the wall that connects the two gatehouse turrets, and followed it to the corner of last year's turret.

The foundations here do not follow the above angular turret but are square and project from the corner (redundantly) quite a way. We think this is probably because when the foundations were laid a decision on the final shape of the turret had not yet been made.

Meanwhile the final digging task continued in the last extension to Trench 2, which was opened to follow the line of the southern facade wall of the gatehouse from our newly discovered turret, and potentially examine its junction with the internal cellar wall we confirmed the location of yesterday.

We found that wall today in the expected position as well as a continuation of the facade wall, but its interpretation and chronology is complex since there are several butt-joints at this junction, and the cellar partition wall is more substantial than it was when we found it yesterday less than 2 metres away - roughly 10cm thicker. Furthermore there seems to be a wall continuing on the same line as the cellar wall running south into the section.

There's still a little more digging to do before it is all cleaned up and a proper interpretation made.

Yesterday digging in this spot produced numerous fragments of carved stonework including several high quality pieces that joined together to make a fragment of a Tudor arch.

The stone fragments continued to emerge today including more fragments of burning which so far have led us to believe that the stonework may be from a fireplace.

Today's star find, perhaps the star of the dig so far, was another large chunk of finely carved stone this time notable for the scratches across its flat face that on close inspection turned out to be deliberate graffiti.

There are two clearly visible capital E letters and a larger probable C. Elsewhere on the surface are much harder to see marks that might be an I or J and possibly an H. One of the Es and the C may also contain residual traces of paint.

Hopefully post excavation work will reveal more!

Tomorrow the residual digging jobs will probably be wrapped up quite quickly and we'll make a big push to fully record the turrets and connecting masonry in Trench 2 before moving over to the not insubstantial task of backfilling the trench.