Following this initial building inspection and survey work, ground work began in April 2011, with the lifting of existing floorboards for the insertion of new floor supports and services, from four of the ground floor rooms, the former Sir Thomas Stepney's Study, the Great Hall and the two rooms that occupy the south-western range of the house. The re-opening and re-investigation of a series of trial pits dug by engineers in the late 20th century, in two of these rooms had already revealed that below the present floor surface was a series of three earlier occupation layers, defined by layers of alternating demolition and construction deposits, with natural clay not being reached until approximately below the present floor level. Finds recovered from the upper most occupation layer of one of these trial pits (The Great Hall) included several large fragments of 17th-century decorative plasterwork, suggesting that parts of the 17th-century house had been demolished and the floor level raised to the present height.