PORCH (from the Latin portielu), a general term for any projection forming a covered space immediately before the entrance to a building, open in front, and more or less enclosed at its aides. The distinction between a porch and a portico is, that, however important it may be as a feature, the porch appears only a subordinate part of the building to which it is attached; whereas the portico [Pomace.) may be the whole of a front : therefore, though the term porch is usually employed only in speaking of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, it would be more correct and convenient to apply it, without regard to style, to what bears the character of a porch. By attending to such distinction, misconception would sometimes be prevented : for instance, if the Atheneum Club-house, London. were described as having a Doric portico, any one unacquainted with the design would imagine that the order was carried up as high as the general entablature of the building; whereas by terming it a Doric porch, such misconception would be avoided.
As far as we are aware, the only instance of a porch in Greek archi tecture is that in the octagonal strueture called the Tower of the Winds, or that of Andronieus Cyrrbestes, which has a small prostyle portal on two of its faces, north-east and north-west, each consisting of a simple distyle, or two columns and their entablature, surmounted by a pediment ; and which therefore may be regarded as the prototype of those ornamental compositions for doors and windows, so greatly affected in Italian architecture, which present is microstyle application of the orders, that is, small columns adapted not to the entire structure, but to subordinate parts of it When portico fronts were laid aside, as partaking too much of the previous Pagan temple; when columns began to be not only attached to the building, but employed as microstyle decorations to its different external stages or stories, often very irregularly, and generally con nected together by arches ; in short, when the Roman style was trans formed into and superseded by the Byzantine and the Romanesque style's, porches began to be important features, subordinate indeed in size to the structures to which they were attached, but principal in regard to embellishment, being frequently composed of groups of small columns, elaborately wrought, and some of them often placed on the backs of lions or other animals, and supporting a series of concentric arches or archivolt mouldings equally enriched. Iiere microstyle embellishment may be said to have been carried to such a height as to be ultimately lost eight of : the columns became at length mere sub.
sidiary members, and a combination of vertical mouldings or shafts cut out of the receding angles constituted the general splay of the whole portal, which was thus extended in appearance ad libitum, without regard to the size of the actual doorway or aperture itself, a very im portant advantage as regards design.
In the Norman.Gothie style, the porches or portals are little more than a modification of the similar features in Romanesque architecture. Of porches however strictly so called, that is, portals projecting out from the edifice, so as to form a sheltered external vestibule, we have comparatively few Norman instances, and those do not occur in the principal front, but at the sides of buildings. The same also is the case in. Pointed Gothic architecture, where, though we often meet with spacious and magnificent portals, especially in eontineutal examples, we do not find advanced porches brought out beyond the general plan of the building in front; the porch being there almost invariably enclosed within the lower part of the structure, even where it may bo said to project with respect to that part of the front which is seen above it, but on a different plane, as for instance in the front of Westminster Hall, Winchester Cathedral, &c., although in those cases the entrances are placed rather within deep recesses than porches. In church architecture, entrances of the last mentioned kind hardly ever occur at the west end or front, but were frequently made very con spicuous; features in the side elevations, of which we have striking Instance* in the beautiful north porches at Salisbury and Wells cathedrals, both of which advance out very considerably. Some of the porches iu our larger parish churches have a room above. [Psaviss.] Wooden porches are common in the smaller churches of every period of English pointed Gothic architecture. .
In our ancient domestic architecture the porch, where it occurs at all, forms a marked, though not always a central feature, in the principal front. When it projects from the main structure, it is usually carried up so as to have a room, or else what forms a bay in a room, over it; and it is not unfrequently carried up higher than the rest, so as to form a kind of tower ; or else the porch is receded within the building, and presents externally merely an open arch. In many Elizabethan buildings, the porch, though forming a narrow com partment of the whole front, is profusely ornamented, even where the rest is quite plain. Kirby, in Northamptonshire, the seat of Lord Chancellor Hatton, offers a most elaborate, not to say extravagant, example of the kind.