A heat wave in the United Kingdom has exposed aerial traces of a long-lost 18th-century formal garden at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. The discovery matters because dry conditions can reveal buried historical features that are otherwise invisible, offering new evidence of the estate’s original landscape design.

Aerial photographs showed the outline of the garden at the UNESCO-listed estate, around eight miles north-west of Oxford, England. The garden is thought to be about 300 years old and forms part of Blenheim Palace’s extensive heritage, combining links to Churchill with its significance as an important historic property.