The search for the Round Table Building is on
Heavy rain overnight has probably done the world of good for the Queen's parched ceremonial lawn in the Upper Ward (the royal family has obviously been abiding by this summer's hosepipe bans in southern England). This is where the archaeologists are hoping to find evidence of Edward III's enigmatic Round Table Building. The diggers are just hoping that there aren't too many more showers throughout the day – it's raining again now, despite the forecast that it would be dry.

The digging is now underway in the Upper Ward, however, regardless of the weather, and Time Team expert Julian Munby's confident assertion that the Round Table Building must be here somewhere is about to be tested. Julian's confidence stems from the fact that contemporary documents describe building materials being transported through the castle's various gates and across its bridges. He also says that there is simply no other space elsewhere in the castle big enough to have accommodated it.

Julian thinks that it would be have been a 'grand, open air arena with a timber-framed grandstand within it overlooking a jousting area'. But another Time Team expert, Richard Barber, isn't convinced. He believes that this would have been too small an area for a jousting arena and that it was more likely to have been a 'circular hall – a stone building containing a stone round table that the knights all sat around'.

What is certain is that something circular does exist beneath the surface here. An aerial photograph from the 1960s that has recently come to light shows a circular parch mark. And Time Team's own geophysics survey also shows a clear circular anomaly. The only way to find out exactly what this represents is to dig – and that's what's happening now.

Canon Denton's building is found
It's all go now as pickaxes, spades, trowels, the mechanical digger and even an angle grinder are brought into action to begin stripping away the upper layers in the Lower Ward. The angle grinder is being used to cut through an old gas pipe – or at least everyone hopes it's an old pipe as sparks fly and the spinning blade cuts into the metal.

It's not long before the diggers come down onto the remains of Canon James Denton's 1519 building for choristers and chantry priests (see Friday 3pm), which was demolished during the Victorian period. Time Team expert Tim Tatton-Brown has researched old documents, including plans and even a 19th-century photograph of the building, and he thinks that what is being revealed is the foot of a spiral staircase from Denton's building. Henry II's Great Hall is likely to be beneath this layer.

Day two
Time Team researcher Emma Young gives us a flavour of her first day at Windsor.

So, yesterday was my first taste of working on live TV as a researcher, and I have survived – well, just...

Step one was working out how to use the communications stuff – you know, that walkie talkie type thing with a headset. I tried wearing it with my sunglasses at first, and walked straight into a wall.

Not good when you're trying to move at speed, something that is most definitely of the essence. I have hurtled from the stately Upper Ward, where the Queen's private apartments are located, to the Lower Ward, by the magnificent St George's Chapel many dozens of times. In filming terms, apparently this was a light day – tomorrow's show is two hours long. But this is good news for looking thin in my wedding dress one week from tomorrow.

So what actually happened yesterday? In archaeological terms, not too much. But the tarmac is up in the Lower Ward and from 9am those archaeologists will be looking for Henry II's Great Hall. And, of course, after months of anticipation, the search for Edward III's mysterious Round Table Building can finally begin...

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