Dairy Farm, Tacolneston, Norfolk

their effectiveness in this respect. At Woundale Farm, Woundale, Claverley (173), Shropshire, the upper floor is also open, and the purpose of this structure must have been ornamental rather than practical. Certainly timber-framed porches were regarded as being of high social standing, for even in those areas where timber-framed construction had little or no significance – for instance, in Devon and Cumbria – timber-framed porches were constructed on houses where the main structure was cob or stone.

Two-storeyed porches are of course to be found on many of the larger timber-framed houses in the country, but it is probably those on smaller buildings that are seen to their best effect. They are to be found on some village houses, the most notable being Porch House, Potterne, Wiltshire, but it is on farmhouses and similar buildings that most occur. The most unusual of these is the three-storeyed porch at Dairy Farm, Tacolneston, Norfolk (174), the first and second floors set back from the one below, each with its own gable.

Although most two-storey porches are in rural areas, they were at one time equally fashionable in towns. Now almost all have been totally removed – if not by the Georgians in their desire to produce regular elevations, then by two centuries of road-widening schemes. Evidence of the former presence of porches in towns comes largely from fines imposed and recorded in borough accounts for encroaching on the pavement and from the existence of the empty mortices in timber-framed houses particularly of the Jacobean period. In some of the smaller towns these porches still remain, as at Castle Donington, Leicestershire (175).