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The earliest record of the surname is in the 1570s in the Parish Registers of Guildford. At this stage of course surnames were completely unstandardised, and it is likely that Reffold and the similar surnames Reffield and Reffell share a common root. There are a whole variety of other variant spellings, some of which may simply be due to transcription errors in Parish Registers and census returns. The origins of the name are uncertain, though some branches of the family maintain a tradition of French origin. There is a surname Reffault, which occurs in the Channel Islands, and it has also been noted that Reffolde is an anagram of the French surname Deloffre. On the other hand it could simply derive from the landscape – ‘Rough field’ and ‘Rough fold’ come to mind as possible origins. ‘Rye field’ has also been suggested. There is an area of woodland called Reffolds Copse near the village of Newdigate in Surrey, with an old house backing on to it called Reffolds. Whether the woodland was named after the house or vice versa is anyone’s guess. However, Newdigate is not in the area of Surrey associated with the Reffolds – it is quite close to Dorking, which has Reffield and Reffell links. Current thinking is that everyone with the name Reffold in his/her ancestry is descended from a William Reffold who was born in Godalming, Surrey in 1727. Several of his children were born at the small village of Peper Harrow, not far from Godalming. However, by the 1790s there seems to have been a mass migration of the family to the nearby and larger village of Elstead. As late as 1881 it is probably true to say that there were more Reffolds in Elstead than in the rest of the world put together and there are still Reffolds there today. Of course, with greater mobility in the 19th Century the name began to spread and a number of Reffold ‘colonies’ were established. Particularly of note is one in Lambeth, where the male members of the family tended to be plasterers by trade. It should also be recorded that two Reffold cousins left Elstead in the 1840s for the town of Driffield in North East Yorkshire. They both had families and as a result there are still a number of Reffolds in Yorkshire today, together with Reffoulds as this variant spelling was adopted by one branch. Anyone with the surname Reffold or Reffould in his or her ancestry is very welcome to get in touch with me.