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The Enfield Archaeological Society {weather permitting} will be opening trenches in Broomfield Park on 19th and 20th of January excavating a possible Tudor garden feature. If you are local you are welcome to watch Enfield's time team in action but be sure to wrap up warm!

This is to be carried out as a precautionary measure in advance of the work to create the new wetlands in areas which have not previously been investigated.

I went down to the excavation on Saturday and talked to Martin Dearne about progress. The trenches intersect the area where "crop marks" appear on the 1999 Google Earth image. Sadly it doesn't seem that we have an undiscovered Elizabethen garden, but those marks were not just where a circus or fair had flattened the grass that summer.

There are shallow trenches and gravel paths, and a wider circle around the one which appears in the 1999 image. Although there is a scattering of some Tudor period sherds, in his view it's no more than you would expect given the proximity to Broomfield House.

He suggested, without having had time to analyse the results properly, that it might be a site dating from the late 19th/early 20th c. I hope I've summarised this properly. He will write an interim report, but a full report on the whole area will await completion of the watching brief on the later work to install the wetlands.

So what is this? I wonder whether it was the site of the gymkhanas held in the park? Time to examine the old photos - unless anyone remembers events in this area. And thanks to Martin and his team of volunteers working in the cold and damp and digging in the sticky wet clay!