Special Edition Story by Anna Parker • Photography by Patrick Brickman
HOMEWORK
At Home with
Hank Hofford & Susan Ford of Bennett Hofford Construction Company Hank Hofford with Wife Susan Ford and Baynard, a Boykin Spaniel Named after the Original Owners of Prospect Hill
I
n 2008, Hank Hofford and his wife Susan were living in Mount Pleasant and had no intention of leaving their home. However, when a family offered to buy their East Cooper residence, the Hoffords took the opportunity and moved out to Prospect Hill, an old, historic plantation home on Edisto Island—a property that they had been working on as a side project. The Hoffords’ story and their history with the plantation home began nearly 20 years ago. Prospect Hill and the surrounding land was initially under contract for a huge
The dining room at Prospect Hill was restored and designed to replicate the original historic space.
56
CH+D • Fall 2012
development—a golf course, marinas, and a housing development—but in an effort to hold on to the historic home and the habitat surrounding it, The Nature Conservancy of South Carolina fought to undo the pending contract. Working with the nature conservancy to save the house and the land, the Hoffords put in a contract to buy the house in 1992. They finally became the owners of the old plantation home in 1999; after much hard work and many nights of camping out on the home’s second floor or the vast backyard during the renovation process, they are happy to
call Prospect Hill “home” 12 years later. Upon their purchase, the Hoffords found the home in great disrepair. As Hank describes, “The porches were about to fall down; you couldn’t walk up the stairs. There were no shutters on the house, and the windows were all broken.” So, when they first decided to renovate Prospect Hill, Bennett Hofford Construction Company came to work on the structure of the house and restore it to its former glory. Bennett Hofford, a long-established construction company in the Charleston area specializing in renovations and new construction, was