MEM23692 - The Cottage, High Street, Porlock (Building)

The building has a comparatively grand stair hall with reception rooms on either side and is believed to date to the 18th or early 19th Century. A "barn" is now incorporated into the main house. The Newlyn artist Leghe Suthers lived here.

The building was subject to historic building recording in 2016 by the SANHS Building Research Group (Exmoor and West Somerset). The building featured a main entrance door (now converted to a window) leading into a comparatively grand stair hall with reception rooms on either side and is believed to date to the 18th or early 19th Century. It is constructed of rubble stone but while previously thatched, it is now covered in concrete tiles. A "barn" has been incorporated into the main house, probably during the 19th Century. There are a series of narrow windows inserted in various locations around the property, one of which retains turnbuckles for a former shutter; these may have had a supervisory function. On the eastern side of the house a mounting block is sited near to the roadside. At the time of the Tithe Apportionment, there were extensive ancillary buildings with a north to south range to the west and a further range parallel to the main house and set to the full width of the site at the rear. A transcription from the 1910 census suggests that the Newlyn artist Leghe Suthers may have lived here with a housekeeper. He was born John Lees Suthers in Lancashire in 1855 and moved to Porlock between 1897 and 1900, dying in 1924. [1] The building is depicted on the Tithe Map for Porlock and on the 1st and 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey maps. [2-4]