The theme of the day today was rubble mining, as we continued to remove the loose brick and mortar fill of our newly discovered Tudor palace cellar.

Yesterday we uncovered two perpendicular walls in the corners of Trench 1 (see the schematic diagram) which, combined with the wall in Trench 2, we think form three sides of a roughly square room, perhaps at the base of a staircase tower.

The fourth side of the room is still in doubt, however; yesterday we had a line of consolidated brick and mortar across the north side of the trench which we thought might indicate at least the remains of a demolished wall line, but on close examination this morning came to the conclusion it was a coincidental area of more dense cellar fill, and so in the afternoon we began to remove it along with the rest of the cellar fill.

Trench 1 is getting quite deep now and close to our limit of safe excacvation and we almost certainly won't be able to get to the floor level of the room. The rubble fill continued to drop hints about its possible floor throughout the day in the form of dozens of fragments of glazed floor tiles (probably dating from the early Tudor period), mostly in red-brown and dark green, which probably once formed a chequerboard pattern if not in this room then in one very close by.

For a bit of variety we did find another unusal Delft tile yesterday, similar to the one on day 2; dating probably to the early 17th century and possibly hexagonal in shape, again likely from a tesselating set.

Tomorrow is our public open day and most of the morning will be taken up with setting up our stalls and displays and family activities, and the pace of excavation when it does get going is likely to be slow, but hopefully we can get to grips with our missing fourth wall before long.

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