page_title: Porch
section_title: Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Porch / Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: Northleach Parish Church, SS Peter and Paul, South Porch 1480AD.
context_page_description: A porch is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule, or a projecting building that houses the entrance door of a building.
  Porches exist in both religious and secular architecture. There are various styles of porches, many of which depend on the architectural tradition of its location. Porches allow for sufficient space for a person to comfortably pause before entering or after exiting a building, or to relax on. Many porches are open on the outward side with balustrade supported by balusters that usually encircles the entire porch except where stairs are found.
  The word "porch" is almost exclusively used for a structure that is outside the main walls of a building or house. Porches can exist under the same roof line as the rest of the building, or as towers and turrets that are supported by simple porch posts or ornate colonnades and arches.
context_section_description: In Great Britain, the projecting porch had come into common use in  churches by early medieval times. They were usually built of stone but occasionally were of timber. Normally they were placed on the south side of the church, but also on the west and north sides, sometimes in multiple.  The porches served to give cover to worshipers, but they also had a liturgical use. At a baptism, the priest would receive the sponsors, with the infant, in the porch and the service began there.
  In later medieval times, the porch sometimes had two storeys, with a room above the entrance which was used as a local school, meeting room, storeroom, or even armoury. If the village or town possessed a collection of books, it would be housed there.
  Sometimes the church custodian lived in the upper storey and a window into the church would allow supervision of the main church interior. Some British churches have highly ornamented porches, both externally and internally. The south porch at Northleach, Gloucestershire, in the Cotswolds, built in 1480, is a well-known example, and there are several others in East Anglia and elsewhere in the UK.
caption: Highly decorated two-storey south porch of 1480 at Northleach Parish Church, England.
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