A day of excitement in Forty Hall today, but sadly for the wrong reasons.

A large grass fire broke out this afternoon on the east side of the lime tree avenue and rapidly spread, alarmingly initially towards the dig site.

A fortunate change in wind direction eventually carried the fire away to the east towards Maidens Bridge, before the London Fire Brigade arrived and were able to get it under control before it spread to any major groups of trees.

The first fire engine arrived very quickly and we were able to assist it onto the site, where its crew did an excellent job dousing the main flames, but a second engine was delayed by another call en-route, so EAS members lent a hand beating out and dousing smoldering hotspots with buckets of water from Maidens Brook, while the fire crew handled the main flame front.

Once the second engine arrived everything was quickly put out and the crews spent most of the rest of the day damping down the scene.

Meanwhile, back at the archaeological dig:

Just before all the excitement, we had just opened our fourth trench, about ten metres to the west of Trench 1, in another attempt to identify the complex of trenches first dug by the EAS in 1963-66.

This is as far west as we can go this year, and on the face of the available evidence we don't think the 60s work can have been significantly further west than this. If this trench draws a blank as Trench 1 did, we have a couple more options nearby, but our chances of finding the 60s work this year would start to seem really very slim, and we would need to seriously re-appraise our evidence for where the 60 work took place.

Things were much more optimistic in Trench 2, however, which is now rapidly producing a rich assortment of brickwork.

The rough brick surface we began to reveal yesterday is now almost entirely revealed, with a distinct edge along its west side. Where it enters the east section of the trench there is a rough tumble of bricks which may or may not be concealing a wall beneath. Just before it enters the west section (foreground of above image) there is a stack of tiles which look to be filling a slot through the surface. We can't tell yet if this is deliberate, for example a collapsed drain, or a coincidental tumble.

Along the east side of the brick surface (upper left in above image) there seems to be the remains of a wall, running on a different alignment to the surface, and we think beneath it (i.e. the brick surface is later and built on top).

There is a lot of work to do to make sense of all this and a lot of careful unpicking of rubble still to go, but the next major job in this trench will be planning and photography tomorrow morning, that is after we've set up all the gear for our public open day.

Let's hope it's not as much of a scorcher as today.