Rofford Hall, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire

Oxford Archaeology (OA) has undertaken a programme of historic building recording and investigation at Rofford Hall near Chalgrove in Oxfordshire. The work was in
advance of and during a programme of refurbishment and other works at the house. The building is an attractive and interesting multi-phase structure in which the
original building is a four-bay wide box-frame building of probable 17th-century date. Although this building is partially encased within later structures or obscured
by secondary re-facings its timber frame remains at least partially intact. The primary timber-framed south front has been entirely replaced by a Georgian brick
front and the original west wall has similarly largely been lost but the primary framing in the north and east walls substantially survives. Four of the five original
trusses largely survive and are each slightly different versions of the same basic type. The trusses each retain evidence of former doorways within them showing that there
was once an attic storey above the first floor. This is also confirmed by evidence of a former ceiling which extended up higher than the current (secondary) ceiling. Thus the first floor and attic storeys would have had very low floor to ceiling heights of c.1.7 m. Evidence suggests that the original house would have had a baffle entry,
adjacent to the very large, surviving chimney stack.
The original house was extended in several phases, the main one of which was of probable late 18th- (or possibly early 19th-) century date. This taller structure extended the house to the west and enclosed the western end of the Phase I building.
The Georgian extension would have made the house into quite a large farmhouse and several features suggest that it would have had some architectural pretension. Among
these the clearest are the front door in the south elevation with cast-iron fanlight and the partially surviving staircase. The largest of the other extensions was of 20thcentury
date.
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