Porch House Farmhouse

Porch House Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the early 18th century, possibly on the site of an earlier house. It underwent alterations around 1840 and was further modified and extended in the early 20th century. The building is constructed of red brick in English and Flemish bond, with the front rendered. It features a clay plain tile roof with gabled ends and large brick gable-end stacks that have set-offs and grouped shafts.

The farmhouse has a T-shaped plan, consisting of two main rooms in the front range, with a central entrance passage that leads to a small stair hall and a kitchen wing at the rear. There is a single-storey outhouse on the gable end of the rear wing. The front was rendered and refenestrated around 1840, and in the early 20th century, bay windows were added to the front along with a large single-storey billiard room wing at the rear left corner.

The exterior is two storeys with an attic and features a symmetrical three-window rendered west front with string courses. The first floor has 12- and 16-pane sash windows, while the ground floor includes two early 20th-century canted bay windows and a central doorway with a glazed and panelled door, a rectangular overlight with margin panes, and an early 20th-century gabled porch. The rear has cross-mullion-transom windows and a large wing at the centre with a single-storey outhouse on the gable end.

Inside, the left-hand front room has deeply chamfered intersecting ceiling beams. The right-hand front room features a deeply chamfered axial beam and a large fireplace with a stop-chamfered bressumer, which has been converted to an inglenook. The kitchen in the rear wing has a shallow chamfered cross-beam. The first-floor chambers have deeply chamfered axial beams, with the right-hand room having stops buried in the walls and a simple moulded chimneypiece. A good early 18th-century open-well staircase is present, featuring a moulded string with a block rusticated frieze, widely spaced turned balusters, heavy handrails, and square newels. The roof structure consists of tie-beam and collar trusses with angle struts, two tiers of trenched purlins, a diagonally-set ridge piece, and intact common rafters. There is a cellar under the rear wing that has a chamfered beam, unchamfered joists, and stone mullion windows.