Founded in 1955, the Enfield Archaeological Society is active in carrying out research and fieldwork in and around the London Borough of Enfield, in order to understand and preserve its history.
Our main aims are: to promote the practice and study of archaeology in the district; to record and preserve all finds in the borough and encourage others to allow their finds to be recorded by the Society; and to co-operate with neighbouring societies with similar aims.
Membership is open to anybody with an interest in the past.
The Enfield Archaeological Society is affiliated to the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society; the President for the society is Harvey Sheldon BSc, FSA, FRSA
All members of the society over the age of 16 are welcome to dig with us – no experience is necessary. We typically run at least one dig a year in the summer, on the site of Henry VIII's Elsyng Palace with other work often cropping up through the rest of the year.
Please note that applications to join this year's summer dig in Forty Hall are now closed.
Non EAS members will still of course be welcome to come along to the park and follow the dig's progress, especially on the 16th and 17th, which will be public open days.
Based on many years of research into original Medieval, and particularly Tudor and later, documents this new book 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 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.
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.
A major new monograph on the archaeology and history of the palace will be published this summer, thanks to funding from the Stories of Enfield Project:
We are pleased to announce the dates of the 18th season of Elsyng Tudor Palace Excavations at Forty Hall, Enfield.
This year's dig will be continuing last year's (partially) successful hunt for the palace's inner gatehouse, tracing
the line of a large demolition cut in the hope that it will lead us to the remains of the multi-story building that
demarked the boundary between the palace's outer and inner courts.
We will be digging from the 10th to the 24th of July 2022. New diggers are welcome.
Anyone aged over 16 interested in taking part in the excavation is invited to get in touch with Martin Dearne
at martin.dearne@talktalk.net. For any other enquiries about the project, please contact the chairman, Ian Jones, via the EAS website.
There will also be a family open weekend in the park on the 16th/17th - be sure to drop by and see what we've found!
In order to start our lecture programme again and to try and make up for some of the time lost due to covid we are going to present out first Zoom lecture on Friday, December 3rd starting at 7pm.
The speaker will be our director of excavations Martin Dearne who will be looking at the people of Elsyng Palace as opposed to the archaeology.
Monarchs, Courtiers, Technocrats and Kitchen Boys; Bringing Elsyng Palace to Life.
Though its archaeology has been the subject of many EAS lectures, few will know the life stories of those who lived and worked at Elsyng Palace. These have been the subject of many years of archive research soon to be published as part of a major monograph. So this is a chance to hear about some of these people and what has been involved in trying to dig into their lives.
The activation code together with any final details and instructions will be sent out to all member’s e-mail addresses on the day of the lecture and will also be put on our website (www.enfarchsoc.org/lectures).
We hope this will be the first in a series of Zoom talks to both see us though the winter and, hopefully, the worst of covid. We would also suggest they become a regular feature of the worst winter months so we could add December and January to our regular programme.
Having experienced several LAMAS lectures via Zoom, after initial reservations, I found the experience most rewarding. I would also suggest that anyone who has a suitable television consider investing in the necessary lead to get both a larger picture and the benefit of your favourite armchair.
Details of the Zoom lectures for January, February and March 2022 will be published in the December bulletin.
A good if not hugely exciting day's work on what turned out to be the last day of our almost two week
dig in search of evidence for the inner gatehouse of Elsyng Palace, in the grounds of Forty Hall.
Having finished excavation at the west end of trench two by the late morning, we were able to
press on with surveying, drawing and photography through lunchtime, and then spent the rest of
the afternoon backfilling and clearing the site for another year.
the demolition cut looking west
Although it's maybe not the most photogenic feature we've ever excavated, we're pretty pleased at
having been able to fully define at least one edge of the very irregular and very wide rubble-filled
demolition cut at the end of the trench.
It is of course far from conclusive evidence of a gatehouse, but it is strong evidence of a substantial,
previously unknown structure very close by, and its location roughly between the meeting point of the
palace's two principal courtyards does support the gatehouse theory.
the demolition cut looking east
The final small extension at the west end of the trench was maybe beginning to show signs of the cut
rising again, but exploring it further in this area may not be possible due to nearby trees and extensive
animal burrowing.
In any case, we already have plenty of ideas for excavation targets next near, which may include a re-visit
to a stretch of wall we saw in a small test pit some way to the north of this year's dig, which may be on a
course to intercept our tentative gatehouse. Watch this space!
As ever we are of course very grateful to our hardy team of diggers whose patience and perseverance make
this work possible.
job complete
What with the ever evolving covid situation it was touch and go whether this year's dig would even happen
and unfortunately we were unable to incorporate the usual batch of students in the dig, which at times
did mean we were a little thin on the ground.
All things considered we're happy to have been able once again to advance our understanding of the
archaeology of Elsyng, and look forward to hopefully pushing it further next year.
We'd also like to thank the Parks Department of Enfield Council for their kind cooperation in preparing
the site for the dig.
As ever, the findings of this year's work will eventually appear in future editions of Society News.
Although our lecture programme is still currently suspended, there are talks going on about staging
digital lectures, which may also eventually include summaries of this year's and other work in Forty Hall.
Work is beginning to wind down now, as we near the penultimate day of our two week
dig on the site of Elsyng Palace in Forty Hall.
We've now wrapped up all the work in the area of trench one, which was examining the course of the
brick water conduit we first saw in 2018.
Having revealed the top of the channel yesterday afternoon, today we partially excavated the fill
of the conduit to a depth of three brick courses, but since we're nearing the end of the dig
we elected not to fully excavate it, as we did this already at a previous position in 2018 and
it wouldn't have told us much that we don't already know.
Having answered the relevant research questions (i.e. the channel has nothing to do with the gatehouse),
we therefore phographed it, drew it and then backfilled it together with the rest of trench one.
west end of trench 2
At the same time we wound up work at the east end of trench two, and also began backfilling it,
leaving only the west end of the trench, with our deep rubble-filled demolition cut, still active.
We slightly enlarged the extended area of the trench to improve access this morning and are now making
one last push to remove the substantial fill of rubble and to define the shape of what looks like
a steep linear, roughly east-west aligned cut.
Whatever structure this cut is associated with, be it the inner gatehouse or something else, we are
still only right on the very edge of it at this end of the trench and probably won't get to see anything
much more substantial this year, but it should hopefully set us up nicely for some great archaeology
the next time we dig here.
late C16th tobacco pipe
The rubble fill continued to throw up all sorts of excellent small finds throughout the day,
including the bowl of what is probably the smallest and earliest tobacco pipe we've ever found.
This one is even smaller than the one we found on Tuesday, which again reflects the high price of
tobacco not long after it was first introduced to Europe.
This bowl is barely 2cm long and less wide, which probably puts it in a date range of 1580 to 1610,
and has a maker's mark on the foot.
Once we have time to look it up, this should get us a more accurate date range and hopefully a place
of manufacture, and perhaps even the name of the maker.
window glass set in lead cames
Right at the base of the cut we also found an astonishingly delicate find in the shape of a section
of a diamond-shaped window pane, with the lead channels (known as 'cames') forming one corner, and
a fragment of glass still set in them.
Although this fragment is nowhere near as complete, it is just as astonishing to find something so
delicate to have survived not only the demolition process but more than 350 years in the ground.
It is also more strong evidence of a building very close by, as a fragment like this cannot have
travelled far from where it derived.
A great day's digging in Forty Hall today, as we approach the end of our two-week hunt for the
inner gatehouse of Elsyng Palace.
Over the past few days we've been busily removing a sloping rubble context at the west end of
trench two, and the further north and west we trace it, the thicker and deeper it seems to run.
We're now very confident the rubble is filling a substantial linear cut, and although we may not
necessarily have identified the exact location of a wall, we have definitely confirmed the existence of
a previously unexplored structure very close by.
This morning, after a brief but exciting detour to free a young muntjac deer that had become entangled
in a fence, we opened a small extension to this end of the trench (as large as we think we can dig and
record in two days), which will either find the far
side of the cut, or expose more of it as it thickens and deepens to the north.
the two sides of the water conduit
Meanwhile, in the 1.5 metre square trench we opened yesterday near trench one, we finally found the
continuation of the brick water conduit that had not shown up earlier in the week in any other of the
predicted positions.
This proves that the conduit does run in a straight line, and does not turn or feed into any features
associated with any gatehouse or moat to its north. The channel's absence from from trench one was indeed
due to extensive truncation due to centuries of successive tree planting in the lime avenue.
yet more pipkins
The only major job left to do in this trench is to excavate the fill of the channel, which we'll do tomorrow.
Trench two continued to produce a varied and steady mixture of finds. The far end of the extended trench
has produced a notable number of pipkin fragments - these were cooking pots with three tripod feet and typically
a hollow ceramic handle into which a wooden extension was fitted for handling when hot.
We've found so many similar fragments of one type of fabric that we think we should be able to reconstruct
a sizeable portion of it after the dig.
an unusual glazed roof tile
Another unusual find that came from trench two late in the day was a drip glazed roof tile - something
that we've never seen before at Elsyng. Glazed roof tiles are something that you would not expect on a
Tudor building, but was a medieval tradition, so this together with the couple of medieval pottery fragments
may together begin to hint at some older archaeology not far away.
If this is the case it will probably have to wait for another year, as we've almost completed most
of this years' work. We're aiming to be done and at least mostly backfilled by Saturday afternoon.
A drizzly and at times chilly morning didn't dampen our spirits today as we returned
to Forty Hall for the final five-day stretch of our two-week dig on the site of Elsyng Tudor palace.
excavating the cut at west end of T2
This morning we decided to have one last roll of the dice in our effort to find the extended course
of the previously excavated brick water conduit we relocated a few days ago. We strung a line out along
the stretch of brickwork we have exposed at the west end of trench one, and extended the line out east into
the middle of Forty Hall's lime tree avenue, where we laid out a 1.5 metre square trench which hopefully should
be clear of any historical tree planting pits which we suspect are the reason we didn't find the conduit
running through the east end of trench 1. We've only got as far as deturfing and topsoil removal, but if the
conduit does run straight in this direction we should only have to dig down 60cm or so to find it.
large sections of mortared-together rubble in the cut in T2
Meanwhile at the west end of trench two, the sloping rubble-filled context is looking more and more like a
rubble-filled demolition cut. We haven't quite finished removing the all of the rubble in this area, but where
we have done so it does seem to show a steep cut into a sloping brickearth surface; moreover at the north section
of the trench the rubble fragments are very substantial and large chunks are mortared together.
We strongly suspect that the structure this rubble derives from is less than a few of metres away, although
from the size of the apparent cut, it may well be that any in-situ wall foundations have been removed entirely.
Ideally we'd like to extend this part of the trench north, but at this point we may be limited by time and person-power.
candle holder
In any case, the context continued to throw up plenty of great finds today, including an unusual ceramic fragment
that had us all scratching our heads for a few minutes until the penny dropped.
At first glance it looked like a stubby cylindrical spout, but the hole doesn't go all the way through, which led to
suggestions ranging from a decorative foot to a suspension point for rope straps.
more medieval pottery
Fortunately the site director then remembered an identical example we found a few years ago, which was identified as a
ceramic candle-holder, which would have had a surrounding dish to catch dripping wax.
Although we only removed topsoil from the new 1.5m square trench, it did turn up a second fragment of medieval
pottery - part of a large handle and rim of what was probably a chunky jar, in a slightly finer fabric than
the previous piece but again tentatively dated to the 14th century.