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blue plaque · England

Blue plaque № 57096

Photograph at the Blue plaque № 57096 blue plaque

The Porch House. This is claimed to be the oldest pub in England with timbers carbon dated to the 10th century. It was built on the orders of Aethelmar, a Cornish Saxon Duke as a hospice to accommodate pigrims, and was subsequently run by the Knights Hospitallers. Inside look for the witch marks etched into a 16th century fireplace in the dining room. They are there to ward off evil spirits. The building was redesigned in 1615 with a porch added by Thomas Shellard. In the 1850s it was three buildings, Holmlea, Porch House and the Eagle and Child Inn. It became a hotel in the 1970s. It is thought that, in medieval times, this area of the town would have been renowned for popular blood sports such as dog fighting, badger baiting and cock fighting.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

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