It was the final day of digging today on day 13 of our 14 day investigation of the inner gatehouse of Elsyng Palace.

Trench 2, our only remaining open trench, was thoroughly cleaned for detailed photography and fully planned by about lunchtime.

We then followed that up with methodical photgraphs of all the exposed vertical wall elevations.

There are many different walls in Trench 2 of many different phases representing multiple modifications, insertions and demolitions over its centuries long use and precisely describing and explaining them all will be a long task in post-excavation.

All the recording work was completed together with a comprehensive photographic survey by about 2pm after which we switched over to the unglamourous task of backfilling.

Backfilling is now the only remaining task and we hope to finish up tomorrow perhaps by about lunchtime.

A summary and eventually a report on the findings of the dig will as usual appear in future editions of Society News.

We'd like to thank our hard working members who made this dig possible and perhaps our most productive in terms of high status structure discovery since 1967. Understanding the location and layout of the inner gatehouse has been a years long effort that will go a long way to advancing our understanding of the layout of the palace, especially that of the inner court which remains largely unexplored and hidden in increasingly inpenetrable woodland.

We are also very grateful once again to Forty Hall Farm and Capel Manor College for the provision of tool storage space and the generous loan of wheelbarrows which has made our job much easier than it might have been!