History, Description & People

Introduction

Porch House has not always existed as you see it now, and was added to and extended over the centuries. It is believed that the oldest part of the building dates from at the latest the fifteenth century, with the addition of stables and outbuildings in the north wing and further living accommodation in the south wing, so that when viewed from the air the entire building resembles a capital E without the central arm.

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Medieval Porch House

The oldest part of the building is the central spine of the “E”, and is now used as the parish hall of Christ the King Roman Catholic Church. Like the neighbouring houses on the same side of Castle Street, it was built with its longer frontage onto the street. The houses on the opposite side of the street are shown on the tithe map of 1840 as built with the shorter frontage onto the street (Porch House comprises numbers 34– 36). This is because they were built on plots allocated by the lord of the manor in return for rent or services. These are known as ‘burgage plots’ because they were allocated to promote the establishment of the town or borough, and the front room was often being used for a trade or as a shop. They are mentioned in the town charter of 1252, and therefore existed at that time. It is possible that Porch House, with its different alignment, predates them.

From Castle Street the house was originally entered through the large two-storied porch which gives the house its name. Linda Hall in unpublished notes for her ‘Rural Houses of North Avon and South Gloucestershire’ suggests a fifteenth century date for this porch. If so, this is significant, as extant fifteenth century (or earlier) porches are rare. Verey suggests a sixteenth century date in the one sentence he devotes to Porch House. However, as we have seen it may be older than either of these dates. The original door now hangs inside the hall, complete with what is said to be an axe-mark made by Commonwealth troops during the seventeenth century English civil war.

The interior of the hall for many years was divided into two storeys, and evidence of the first floor fireplaces and doors remain. It is now open to the underside of the roof timbers, with wind braces strengthening the rafters which are joined across the hall by collar beams. At the north end of the hall is a large, if rather low, fireplace with its large chimney breast, inside which hams, fish and other foods would have been smoked. The cupboard to the right of the fireplace seems too large to have been a bread oven: it may have been an inglenook in which members of the household could sit and warm themselves, as also may the cupboard on the left of the fireplace.

At the south end of the hall there used to be a corridor leading to the rest of the house, which corresponds to a screens passage in a grander house. The room above – left when the hall was opened in the 1960s and now entered from halfway up the staircase in the south wing – has a sash window facing Castle Street. It has a strangely thick wall on its left hand side and a much thinner one on its right, suggesting that this room too was a part of the medieval hall – perhaps a gallery or even a ‘solar’ – a room to which the owner and his family could retire from the communal living in the hall below.

Returning to the hall, opposite the porch entrance is an archway, now containing a service hatch but originally above a door leading to the courtyard behind, which lay between the north and south wings of the house. To its left, and in a corresponding position on the opposite wall, can be seen traces of a dividing wall, shown clearly on the plan of the house in the 1840 Thornbury tithe map. This would have been inserted when the house became more than one dwelling, at some date yet to be discovered but possibly at the same time as the construction of the south wing.

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The south wing

The date of the building of the south wing is as yet uncertain. It was originally some two metres longer until the new entrance to the church was constructed in 1979/80. Now the ground floor has three large interconnecting rooms, with a surprisingly unimpressive spiral staircase built in part round a large newel post leading to the first floor. The downstairs rooms have large rough-hewn beams suggesting an early date, but the panelling in the handsome front room known as the parlour, assuming that it is original, suggests a seventeenth century date. Sash windows with window seats and internal shutters and comparatively narrow reveals suggest a later date – or later additions. This room opens off the medieval hall as well as into the rest of the house, and is now used for smaller parish meetings.

Beyond the parlour is what is now a small hall with a modern (1960s) porch leading to the front garden. This room was originally larger. A passage to the kitchen was taken out of the north side, and cupboards were built over the west wall. At the back of the cupboards there are the remains of a fireplace, for this room was once a sitting room with a French window where the porch now is. The wall to the left of the door is surprisingly thick. The doorway, originally part of this room but now in the corridor leading to the kitchen, has an interesting surround.

The kitchen itself has been quite drastically remodelled, but still has a large exposed beam and two deep-set casement windows. The door which would have led out into the courtyard is low by modern standards. The ceiling is lower than the ceilings in the other two ground floor rooms, and the room above, now the parish priest’s office, has a step down into it, an interesting mock Tudor door frame, and a casement window overlooking what was once the internal courtyard as well as a sash window looking over the front garden. The casement window has interesting, possibly medieval, window furniture, and one of the walls has panelling like that in the parlour downstairs.

The other two rooms at the front of the first floor seem to be unremarkable. The room halfway up the stairs, known as the Poyntz room, has been described above.

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The north wing, garden and other features

The north wing of the house was originally outbuildings and stables, as shown on the tithe map. At present it is occupied by the kitchen and toilets for the parish hall, with ‘the flat’, two rooms, one large and one small, above. Access to the flat is by two staircases, one at each end of the wing.

Behind and beside the house, there was a large garden where the church now stands, the remainder being now a garden and a car park. The wall at the west end of the garden is the original town wall, superseded by a second wall to the west of what is now Stokefield Close. The tithe map shows that in 1840 the site of Stokefield Close was occupied by an orchard belonging to Porch House.

Unlike many of the houses in Castle Street no water storage system has been discovered, but water can be heard constantly running under a manhole cover in the church garden. There are cellars beneath the south wing, their west wall being partly formed of the Thornbury conglomerate bedrock. There appear to be no cellars beneath the hall itself, though there is a tradition of a tunnel beneath the pavement outside the hall in Castle Street. The tunnel is said to be big enough for someone to walk thorough, and to lead to Thornbury Castle.

The south wing has attics, with modern windows inserted in 1980 at the west end.

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Life in Porch House

Medieval life in Porch House must be a matter of conjecture, as definite records of its occupants only begin to appear in the eighteenth century. The original part of the house dates back at the latest to the fifteenth century, and the small room or ‘parvise’ over the porch itself has led to a query as to whether the hall could originally have been part of a grange (an outlying farm) belonging to one of the local abbeys, Kingswood possibly or Gloucester, run by two or three lay brothers .However, this is only a possibility.

It is more likely that it is a typical medieval hall farmhouse where family, servants and the smaller domestic animals lived, ate and slept together. The floor would have been covered with rushes, and there may well have been a central fire with a simple smokehole in the roof above. The fire was used for cooking and for warmth. Later modifications include the large fireplace at the north end. This had the great advantage of carrying smoke away from the living space. It also gave somewhere to smoke hams, flitches of bacon and other food, including probably salmon from the Severn, so preserving them for the winter. Cooking would have been carried out in an iron pot hung over the fire, possibly a spit for roasting in front of it, and a bread oven built in the side . Later still the south end of the hall may have been screened off to make a corridor, known as a ‘screens passage’ which led to a separate kitchen and other offices at the back of the house . It may be that at the same time the room halfway up the stairs, now known as the ‘Poyntz Room’, with its thick walls on its north side, was screened off from the hall to provide a private place for the family.

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw changes in many of the richer, or slightly richer, English houses. This may well be when Porch House’s south wing was built. The south wing has a parlour fronting onto the street with a sitting room behind, and beyond that the kitchen and servants’ quarters. Although the parlour is a handsome panelled room it also has two large beams which are rough hewn, showing signs of remodelling from the medieval building.

Porch House is recorded in the Rent Roll for 1670 as belonging to ‘the widow Attwell’. The Attwells were an important local family: Richard Attwell was the founder of Thornbury Grammar School and is buried in Gloucester Cathedral. St. Mary’s Church has a memorial tablet in the centre aisle to a Mrs. Mary Attwell who died at the end of the seventeenth century aged ninety two.

By the nineteenth century the original medieval hall had been divided into two rooms, as we see from the tithe map of 1840. Its second fireplace in the east wall may well date from this division. It was also at some stage divided horizontally, as can be seen from the traces of fireplaces and doors still remaining on the first floor.

The nineteenth century censuses give a picture of a series of prosperous tradespeople occupying the house, or houses, with the occasional owner of ‘independent means’. It is only possible to take two examples, one from each end of the series. In 1841 a family named Gwynn lived in the two parts of the house. Richard, aged 88, lived in the smaller northern part. He had been a chandler (candle maker) and soap boiler, occupying premises in the High Street or possibly Soapers Lane, according to an abstract of titles held at Gloucestershire Record Office. In 1841 his occupation is given as ‘cheese factor’, buying the cheese made in the farmhouses of the Berkeley Vale and selling it on to the town shops and merchants. On his death the memorial records describe him as ‘Gent’ so he must have risen in the world, something borne out by the fact that his son Thomas, living in the south part of the house, is described in the census as ‘independent’. The occupation of Thomas’ son John, still living at Porch House in 1851, is that of ‘solicitor’. A nice example of social mobility in three generations.

In the 1891 census Porch House was occupied by Thomas Cox Smith, a tailor born in London at Bow, and his family. In the 1901 census he is described as a ‘master tailor’, and an advertisement in Brown’s Almanac of 1904 announces: ‘the most Fashionable Goods of the Best Makes kept in Stock.’ He also made ‘Ladies’ Riding Habits, Jackets and Ulsters, Liveries, Etc’ and is said to have been tailor to the Berkeley Hunt. Two of his four sons were killed in the First World War, Frederick, a tailor like his father, serving with the United States army, and William serving with the South African infantry. One wonders why both were serving with foreign forces.

There is plenty of material for study in the nineteenth century censuses. To take one example, in 1891 when the Smiths were living in the south part of the house the north part was occupied by two sisters living on their own means, one a widow with two children. The sisters were born in Madras and Bombay. One would like to know more. In 1961 the house was bought from a Miss Smith (could she have been a relative of Thomas Cox?) by the Society of the Divine Saviour to provide a church for the twenty-year old parish of Christ the King. The hall was restored to its medieval configuration and used as the church until the new church was opened in 1964. The priests adapted and lived in the south wing until 1999 when a house opposite the church was bought for their use.

Christ the King Roman Catholic parish is fortunate to possess this old and interesting building, which provides a meeting place both for the parish and for other bodies. It could well be the basis for study of the development of a medium sized town house over the centuries, especially if it could be given sympathetic restoration.

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Jane Bradshaw