Hampton Court Palace, Privy Garden Collapse

In December 2009, Oxford Archaeology were commissioned by Cathedral Works Organisation (CWO), acting on behalf of Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), to undertake an archaeological excavation in The Privy Garden, Hampton Court Palace. Following the appearance of a hole in the top of a raised walkway along the eastern edge of the garden, subsequent investigation by CCTV appeared to show that the subsidence was due to the failure of a linear arched structure built against the west side of the walkway's retaining wall. The principal aim of the excavation was to ascertain the nature of the arched structure, and to define the extent of the failure in order to facilitate its repair by CWO. A single trench was excavated, centred on the void created by the collapse. The excavation revealed a series of landscaping deposits within the raised walkway, which were cut by the construction trench for a large brick built culvert. The material in the landscaping deposits gives them a late 17th to early 18th century date. The top of the culvert had been crudely mortared to the western face of the stepped footing of the retaining wall, and thus clearly post-dated that wall. The lowermost landscaping deposits may be the upper infill of the Tudor moat, which was filled when William III expanded and relaid the garden. If, as seems reasonable, the landscaping deposits date from William's first stage of works to the garden in the 1690s, it is probable that the culvert dates to the radical lowering and re-laying of the garden after June 1701, to allow a clear view of the river from the King's Apartments.