Character Building - Open Porches

ABOVE: Bespoke cedar porch by Greenwood Oak (greenwoodoak.co.uk), who usually craft in oak

Not everyone who desires a traditional oak-framed porch for their house goes to the extremes pursued by retired industrialist Sir Martin Wood when he commissioned a full-height jettied structure for the entrance to a new wing at his manor house in a village in Oxfordshire.

In a slightly ostentatious way he was making the statement that many self-builders and home improvers wish to make when they commission an oak-framed porch for their house. However you don't have to go to extremes like this; indeed some traditional architects who like to put porches on the outside of their houses warn renovators against adding porches if they are likely to disrupt the scale and natural harmony of a period house.

It is easier with new-build, assuming the house is of the style that will take it. Charley Brentnall of Carpenter Oak and Woodland, who created the frame for Sir Martin, recently built the oak frame for the porch on the new traditional style house of Dilys and Mike Evans in Hampshire. Both Dilys and Mike and their designer, Quentin Saloway, felt the porch would soften the appearance of the new house and also add character to the frontage, which is traditional in style, tile hung and with square leaded lights in all the windows.

A more rustic look can be achieved by leaving the entire sides open, omitting the hip at the front and exposing the studs. Rupert Newman of Westwind Oak Buildings, who designs all his own porches, prefers this sort of look. He likes to avoid hips, preferring plain gable ends as he feels these expose more of the headbeam, and keeps his porches entirely open, with no glazing and only low side walls.

For a client near Oxford he did just this, exposing the vertical oak studs showing above the curved headbeam at the front. Curved windbraces on either side of the entrance sweep down to shoulder height to further the rustic look.

Like Westwind Oak, Charley Brentnall likes to use naturally curved timber, as opposed to cutting windbraces and other sections out of oak board. "Doing it this way is traditional and means the oak has more natural strength than timber that has been cut out of a flat piece, in which case you get a lot of cross grain, which is not so strong," Charley says. Using naturally curved timber is also less wasteful and means the timber is less likely to split.

Whatever style of oak framed porch you decide to have there are certain dos and donts to bear in mind. "It really is all about scale and this word should be underlined 50 times," says traditional architect Stephen Langer, who specialises in creating and extending oak framed buildings in and around the Weald of Kent and Sussex. A really stylish house elevation is like a human face: it will look very peculiar if the nose is all wrong. For this reason Stephen often advises clients against porches, suggesting they go for flat-topped canopies instead. "You must have a reasonable-sized house to take a porch of this type," he says. "One of the main reasons for this is that, if the porch is to look at all good, the roof must have a reasonable pitch. Otherwise it will be a case of tail wags dog."

Stephen also advises against creating porches where existing windows may detract from the finished effect. "At worst I have seen some porches where the pitch of the roof has been cut away and replaced with a flat section of roof to avoid hitting an existing window," he says. "That always looks a mess."

Stephen Mattick, who has also created a number of these features, is another designer who favours the rustic look and is a specialist in creating porches and complete houses that look aged from the day they are occupied. "I like to use green oak that has been sawn and rough-planed so you get an idea of what the timber might have looked like 200 years ago," he says.

"I also generally prefer to leave my porches open with the studwork showing at the front above the tie-beam and like the wallplates protruding and the tile battens visible. I avoid hips and, if possible, like to lean the gable end forward and curve the ridge back towards the house. This makes the rafters steeper at the gable end than the wall end and is a good technique for creating an aged look, in which the porch is leaning away from the building behind it."

Further reading:

• A Guide to External Appearances
• Porches, Porticoes and Canopies
• Exterior makeovers