The Building and Its Inhabitants

1840 Tithe Map
(PDF file format)

Castle Street
Numbers
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6 Oriel Cottage
 7
 8 Oriel House
 9 Lion House
10 Wigmore House
11 Porch House
12 Epworth House
13
14 Bank Cottage
15 Clematis Cottage
17 The Priory
20
22
24
26
28 & 28A
30
32 to 42
44
46
48
50 Munday Cottage
Fairfield House
Stokefield House
The Hatch
Thornbury Cottage 
Thornbury House

We are indebted to the research of Alison Bagnall and Linda Hall for the information that the building known as Porch House in Castle Street in Thornbury was a medieval open hall built in the 1400's.  English Heritage have confirmed that that building has Fifteenth Century origins.

We have used the photograph from the website of Porch House  to illustrate the shape of the house.  We recommend that you visit the Images of England website for a detailed description of the building itself which is  very old and well preserved and is one of the most interesting  buildings in Thornbury.  It is now partly the Church Hall of the Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Thornbury, which is the modern church building adjoining one wing of the house.

Porch House faces Castle Street and the oldest part of the building, including the porch which gives the house its name, follows the line of the street. 

The two wings at either end of the house can also be seen in the Tithe Apportionment Map which was drawn up between 1838 and 1840.  Please click on the thumbnail image of the Tithe Map on the left to see the details.

The  history of who owned and who actually occupied the house in its earliest days is partly a matter of conjecture as those records are still not fully researched.

However the researcher Alison Bagnall believes that the house could have been the property of the Berkeley family and may later have been occupied by the Hilpes.  We have not been able to confirm this, but there is evidence that the Hilpes owned land called the Latteridge and the Green House Closes which could include the property that is now Porch House.  John Hilpe also appears to be associated with the Green House itself.

In the first decade of the 1600's Porch House was owned by the Attwells family and from 1729 by John Crowther

By 1800 it was occupied and then owned by the Gwynn family.

From about 1871 to about 1875 it was the home of Arabella Thurston the widow of Henry Neville Thurston.

From 11th September 1875 to 1879 it was leased from John Crowther Gwynn by Edwin Boyes Lonnen who lived there.

From 17th December 1879 to about 1893 it was owned by Admiral Henry Craven St John who also acquired Latteridge at the same time, thus  showing that Latteridge was associated with Porch House continuously from the time of the Attwells family.

From 1879 to 1885 it was the home of John and Charlotte Buckley

From 1889 to 1961 it was the home of Thomas Cox Smith and his family.  Thomas Cox Smith eventually bought the house from Admiral St John. 

There were other households on site of Porch House.  We know that at times the house itself appeared to be divided into two (this seems to be the case in the 1840 Tithe Map).  However  in earlier times there was actually another building.  In 1913 when Thomas Cox Smith raised a mortgage from Thomas Smith of Brimsham Farm there was a reference to the house on plot 35 which was called "the site of house now taken down and garden."  By the Tithe Map of 1840 there was no house on this land. 

In the 1891 Census the second household (presumably half of the divided Porch House) was the home of the two daughters of William Archibald Searle.  Click here to read about Rosalind Anderson and Constance Searle.

We have been told that in 1961 the house was bought from a Miss Smith by the Society of the Divine Saviour to provide a church for the twenty-year old parish of Christ the King.    From the 1940's they had used a  building at 13 St Mary Street  which became too small for their needs.  The new church of Christ the King was opened in 1964.  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.

This page was last updated: 29/01/2012