THE AIM OF THIS BOOK has been to address one question – what sort of building was a church porch during the English Middle Ages? To do so the investigation has used methodologies which promote investigation of what a building can be phenomenologically as well as functionally and architecturally. Porches are particularly well suited to such an approach, because of the ubiquitous characteristic of a permanently open entrance. As a result, porches are architectural definers of space which can combine exteriority and interiority to an equal extent. The natural environment, climate and landscape influence one's experience of being within a porch more than in almost any other building. The involvement of natural phenomena implies some similarity between porches and less permanent structures that might be termed shelters rather than buildings. The notion and function of providing shelter is one of the most frequently rehearsed justifications for why church porches were built; that they provided protection for the church door. Conceiving of church porches in that mode necessitates questions of permanence and transience. Are they to be understood as the grounded, settled manifestation of less formal structures? And is the provision of shelter at the core of what sort of buildings porches were in the late medieval period? The architecture goes some way to answering those questions.

Historically porch architecture has been a celebration of variation, as is evident in the twelfth-century porches at Malmesbury Abbey and Southwell Minster, to name just two early examples. Malmesbury porch is replete with religious imagery and heavily articulated surfaces including the rib-vaulted ceiling. In contrast, at Southwell the large entrance leads into a simple barrel-vaulted space with the intersecting wall arcade and geometric mouldings of the seven-ordered door into the church being the only decorative elements. Neither porch has side apertures, but the interior design causes the former to feel close and intense; the latter expansive and airy. In the architecture of church porches constructed in East Anglia between the mid thirteenth century and the early sixteenth century, however, there is evidence of a particular tension. Whilst this tradition of variation in terms of form is maintained, a sense of typological development has also been identified.