Porth-En-Alls

House, dated 1906 but mostly rebuilt 1910–1914. The rebuilding was designed and supervised by Philip Tilden, a distant relative of T. T. Behrens for whom the house was built. It stands on the site of an earlier house that was the home of John Carter, known as the King of Prussia.

The structure is built of granite rubble with granite dressings, some rock-faced granite from Tregonning Hill, with partly cavity walls. Windows are leaded bronze in teak frames. The reinforced concrete floors are overlaid with oak boards, and internal joinery is of English oak. The gable-ended roofs are stone slate from the Forest of Dean, laid to diminishing courses with swept valleys and hipped roof dormers. A glazed roof covers the squash court. The house has lateral and axial dressed stone chimneys, three of which bear moulded cornices.

The building is set into the cliff face with the garden front at a lower level facing south towards the sea, while the entrance is at a higher level on the west side, facing the chauffeur's lodge (Porth-en-Alls Lodge). The plan is Y-shaped, built into bedrock at an elliptical entrance courtyard with access from ground level to attic gable. A single-storey wing stands to the left of the entrance courtyard, and a taller single-storey plus attic wing to the right, set at right angles to each other. Beyond them lies a two-storey plus attic principal range, forming the shaft of the Y. The main range is two rooms wide under parallel roofs. The first floor is the only level that encompasses the entire house and contains the four principal rooms on the right-hand (south) side, including a large drawing room with two bay windows flanking a balcony. The balcony and windows are carried on a three-bay arcade. The left-hand wing contains a former squash court, with the stair hall at the rear left of a passage. The front of the passage, beneath the forecourt, is lit by a pagoda-like lantern. Left of the squash court is a two-storey former workshop block. A great hall was intended to adjoin the rear (east) of the house, but work was curtailed by the First World War.

The style is English vernacular revival. The west entrance front at the higher level opens from a circular courtyard for turning vehicles, across which stands Porth-en-Alls Lodge. A smaller courtyard (roof terrace), flanked by two round-on-plan gate piers, leads to the main entrance doorway in the front gable end of the principal two-storey plus attic range. The doorway has a moulded shallow arch with hoodmould and string on corbels, and an oculus window to the coped ashlar gable above. The original heavy panelled door is retained. On the south seaward side, the ground lies at a lower level. The garden front presents two storeys plus attic with five window bays (arranged 2:1:3). A doorway to the middle bay stands behind a three-bay Romanesque-style arcade to the ground floor on the right. A balcony over the doorway is flanked by three-light bay windows with mullions and transoms. Each first-floor bay to the left has a three-light mullioned window; a doorway connects the left-hand bays, with a corbelled sundial above. Hipped attic dormers sit behind a parapet with moulded cornice. The other elevations display irregularly disposed features in similar style.

Interior surfaces include original unpainted mortar and timber, with structural elements freely displayed to give vitality to the spaces. Joinery is carefully detailed in 17th-century style: moulded two-panel doors with moulded architraves with corner and rail blocks; heavy chamfered balusters to the stair; a Classical-style chimneypiece of red Sicilian marble in the drawing room; other 17th-century domestic and Classical details; and some 15th-century style linen-fold panelling, including a sliding door with linen-fold panelling.

Porth-en-Alls is a remarkable 20th-century house incorporating many advanced technical innovations, including the use of reinforced concrete. Its real charm lies in the imaginative and ingenious way the house fits its awkward site and the varied use of materials and style.