A striking building lost in the mists of time has been rediscovered through archaeological detective work at Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton.

For a brief few days, evidence of the foundations of the hidden building that had not been seen since the 1950s, returned to view thanks to the efforts of overseas archaeological teachers and students who have carried out painstaking fieldwork on what lies beneath a former fairway at the golf course.

The small corner of the golf course – which is currently being redesigned – holds a significant secret in the development of Bermuda, because previously discovered beneath the soil are the foundations of one of the earliest homes constructed on the Island.

That house, called The Grange, was the home of Bermuda's second Governor Daniel Tucker and dates back to around 1617.

Artefacts linked to The Grange that have been found in the past few years include some of the very earliest tobacco smoking pipes, pieces of ceramics and glass and animal bones.

The smoking pipes are a key indicator for dating the location. Dr. John Triggs, of Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, explained the pipes can be accurately dated by the diameter of the pipe entrance.

The earliest versions had a much larger diameter and show they were being used in the early years of tobacco smoking within the English colonies.

Such items are helpful pointers to piecing together the lives of those who lived centuries ago at the western end of the Island.

Bermuda's own archaeologist Dr. Edward Harris – who invented the globally-used Harris Matrix system for recording archaeological evidence – was instrumental in pinpointing the location of Governor Tucker's home in the late 1990s.

Since then a number of archaeological digs have taken place each February, led by Dr. Triggs, to uncover evidence of the original Grange home and of the subsequent house called The Grove which appears to have been built directly on top of the old homestead and dates back to the 18th century.

That house was demolished in the 1960s shortly before the Port Royal Golf Course was created. There are still people around who remember seeing the 250-year-old cottage before its demolition.

But what has been unearthed during the 2008 dig is an adjacent building that was knocked down at an earlier date, thought to be in the 1950s, and which so far no living person appears able to recall.

A sketch of The Grove and the second "working building" drawn in 1941 show it had stables incorporated within its design. This has been borne out by the unearthing of horseshoe nails and buckles at the site, along with ceramics and bottle glass.

Using the drawing as a guide, and from taking aerial shots of the location, Dr. Triggs and his volunteer team mapped out where the foundations of the mystery building should be and then set about carefully shifting the soil away until they found evidence of foundations exactly where predicted.

"I've been coming to this site since 2004. This is my fifth season. I come back and bring students for about 12 days and we make a quick excavation. I bring archaeological students with experience and sometimes we have staff come as well,"said Dr. Triggs.

While heavy, earth-moving equipment is being used elsewhere on the sprawling golf course, tiny tools and delicate brushes are used to shift the soil with the two metres-by-two metres and two metres-by-one metre plots of archaeological focus. The smallest pieces of artefacts might be lost without such attention to detail.

"The problem is that when they knocked down these buildings they took them right down to the bedrock. We have found cuts in the bedrock that line up exactly with where our overlays show the building should have been,"said Dr. Triggs. "But there is not much left of the buildings."

Collecting what small amount of artefacts can be found, together with soil samples that contain pollen from yesteryear, help build up a picture of what was once there and what types of plants were growing in the vicinity.

Fish and animal bones can also be used to indicate what types of species were around, the food residents ate, and what resources they had.

When the site has been thoroughly explored the discoveries will be gathered in a written record by Dr. Triggs for today's and future generations to learn from. He has already written a number of articles on the discoveries.

Among the archaeologists this year is American history teacher Lisabeth Robinson, from Ohio.

She has an interest in the environmental landscape of bygone years. From contemporaneous records she knows that Governor Tucker tried to create a Mediterranean-type garden with orange and lemon trees, figs, and even olive trees.

Some of the introduced species did not succeed. But the records provide a fascinating insight into the early days of the Island as colonists created fenced off gardens, grew cash crops such as potatoes for export and introduced early forms of conservation laws to preserve cedar trees and the now long gone fig trees.

This year's team of archaeologists leave the Island today. Dr. Triggs is already looking forward to returning as he is particularly fascinated by historical archaeology of the earliest English and European settlements in North America – and Bermuda is one of the oldest settled outposts in the hemisphere.

He added: "It is great for the students to come here and get involved in a dig at the site and have the opportunity to work on a different kind of site and also get to know Dr. Harris."

All being well 2009, which happens to be the 400th anniversary of the permanent settling of Bermuda, should be significant for the Port Royal archaeological site.

It is hoped that a 44ft deep well buried on the site, and described by Governor Tucker in 1622, can be explored.

Who knows what will be found at the bottom, but the evidence – even if only pollen and dead insects – will add to our knowledge of Bermuda's earliest settlement days.