A ferret has provided an unwitting link to the present for a medieval hunting lodge in Wormingford.

Historians and archaeologists had no idea that such a building existed on the slopes overlooking the village and its Elizabethan hall, until three men, out hunting rabbits, lost one of their ferrets.

Thanks to a radio tracking device it was wearing, the animal was soon found. But while digging it out, they also discovered, along a meadow boundary, the remains of a 16th-century brick wall.

See today's Essex County Standard for full story and more pictures.