Do British houses commonly have Front or back porches? especially detached late 19th century? What about basements/cellars. From what I've seen of television and read porches don't seem ro be mentioned. They are very common in America.

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DumCrescoSpero@reddit

Some have back porches (a small room attached to the back of the house, not a big open wooden porch like in America) and I've only ever seen two houses with basements in my life. They're really rare here.

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Queen_of_London@reddit

Is the back porch you're taking about what I think of as a lean-to? Basically where the side-return has been covered over with a perspex (or glass, if posh) roof, and can't be used as living space but is good for storage. Never heard it called a back porch before, but I can see why it could be.

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DumCrescoSpero@reddit

Has glass windows, the roof of it is typically made of brick and covered with the same material on a roof to make it rain resistant/proof. If the roof is glass/perspex, it's usually a fair bit larger and would be called a conservatory.

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Queen_of_London@reddit

If it has windows then it's not a lean-to. So I think I just haven't seen the type of thing you're talking about. Or maybe I have and just thought of it as a small conservatory.

Different to an American porch, in any case.

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DumCrescoSpero@reddit

What I'm talking about and what's on the back of my house is similar to something like this or this.

You can just about fit a box freezer in it or maybe a small cupboard/chest of drawers.

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Queen_of_London@reddit

Looks exactly like the front porch! I wasn't doubting you at all as to their existence, I just don't recall seeing it in person.

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mrshakeshaft@reddit

I wouldn’t say they are that rare. Most northern terraced houses have them, especially the back to back ones because they were so fucking small you needed to maximise the space. We had one that we converted into the kitchen.

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lammy82@reddit

To nit pick, the back-to-back terraces certainly do not have rear porches.

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mrshakeshaft@reddit

Sorry, I meant cellars, not rear porches. I should have been more specific, cheers for the call-out.

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lammy82@reddit

Ah, gotcha

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minty_tarsier@reddit

Ooooh interesting. I'm in London and loads and loads of houses have basements. It's very common for a Victorian house to be split into two flats - one ground/basement, the other first/second. I grew up in a house with a 'granny flat' in the basement, too.

Porches, though... the American type... yeah I've never seen those here.

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MiserubleCant@reddit

the "lower ground"/basement thing is more archetypal of Georgian/Regency-era housing than Victorian. no doubt there are some Victorian examples but I wouldn't say it's "very common" for them, whereas it definitely is for Georgian. not trying to be a nitpicking arsehole or whatever!

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minty_tarsier@reddit

Ha, no, all good. Appreciate the clarification!

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tepig37@reddit

I think London, especially the central london town house, to have massive basement because its easier to get planning permission for a basement then an above ground extension.

I dont think there really like traditional in london. I grew up in an old Victorian house and it doesn't have one. Neither did any of the houses i went to as a kid.

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KeeOra@reddit

This is not just a London thing and certainly not for planning permission purpose, as basements were made in Victorian houses before planning permission existed! They typically can be found in better quality Victorian houses, but I have also seen them quite commonly in smaller back-to-back houses.

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Queen_of_London@reddit

I don't think they mean that type of basement, that's basically an entire home of its own, with own entrance and large windows. My flat is ground floor and basement, and the back area leads straight into the garden.

It's a different design to the kind of basement that's basically a cellar with a small window.

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DifferentWave@reddit

I’ve seen several terraced houses in West Yorkshire and Lancashire that have cellars. They’re often rather abandoned places that are used as storage rather than functioning rooms to live in though.

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btapple@reddit

But you have dungeons right? 😀

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ConsciousBother4047@reddit

The American style - very rare. Porches for us are when you build a tiny room in front of your front door for a new front door to go on and squeeze a downstairs loo into it if you can too.

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TarcFalastur@reddit

I would argue that for even more people, a porch is a small wooden roof just wider than your door to keep you slightly less wet while you fumble to find your keys.

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Active_Definition_57@reddit

Handy for storing things like shoes/boots and umbrellas.

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TarcFalastur@reddit

I think you're missing the point. I'm referring to a porch which looks like this:

https://www.theporchspecialist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/wall-mounted-2.png

If you store your shoes and umbrellas there, they're going to get stolen in under 24 hours.

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New_Line4049@reddit

Porches, yes, very common. Basements, not even so much. Some places have them, but its not as common as I understand it to be in many areas of the US.

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nonsequitur__@reddit

I don’t think they mean our type of porch. I think they mean those long open terrace/platform things you see in American films with a swing or rocking chair on.

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New_Line4049@reddit

Not really a porch that. Its a deck.

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nonsequitur__@reddit

Americans call it a porch, but I agree.

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New_Line4049@reddit

Theyre wrong. And in the "AskaBrit" reddit I can say that categorically. If we were in a US based forum then sure, they can decide the definition of words, not here though.

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Rexel450@reddit

Older houses had cellars, a place to store coal.

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Fyonella@reddit

Lots of old Victorian & Edwardian terraced houses have basements.

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TooLittleGravitas@reddit

Basements or cellars?

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Fyonella@reddit

The way I understand it, it’s a cellar if it’s just a basic unfinished storage space.

A basement is when it’s an actual liveable space.

Based on this, I mean basement.

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TooLittleGravitas@reddit

OK, I've never known a UK house with a basement. Just my experience.

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Fridarey@reddit

There's always exceptions, but houses in UK tend to have a front door which opens into a neutral space (most people call it a "hall" or "hallway") which connects to other rooms. Sometimes this also includes a separate first space where you can wipe your feet, take off shoes and hang up coats before going through an internal door into the actual hall.

The idea of an external door opening into a family room or whatever is completely alien.

We also don't have such great weather so shifting the pre-family space from internal (hall) to external (porch) isn't so natural here.

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geekroick@reddit

Plenty of smaller (terraced, usually) houses have a front door that opens directly into the living room...

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Wonderful_Discount59@reddit

In my street, all the houses were built with an entrance hall and a front and back room. But most of them have had some or all of the interior walls knocked through so they're now one big room without a hall (or front and back room without a hall, or a big room and a hall).

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TooLittleGravitas@reddit

Also, older cottages

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Y-Bob@reddit

I've been across quite a bit of the UK and porches, like the US equivalent are rare.

Lots of houses have conservatories, like a big greenhouse attached to the back of the house.

Some older houses have a small entrance porch, but you'd never fit an armchair under there and still get in through the door.

Some houses from maybe the 60's or 70's have a small version of a conservatory on the front.

Garden shelter is becoming more popular, but they still don't match the US porch.

That's not to say they don't exist, but they are rare enough that every time we've (wife and I) seen one we want to live there. I miss a good porch.

My Victorian house has got a basement. It's not a fancy house and the basement isn't fancy either. It looks like something a punishment beater might maintain. The ceiling is a little low, but the house next door has a full height basement that has been kitted out, it's just due to the gradient of the clay they built on.

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NaomiT29@reddit

What is called a porch in the US would typically be called a terrace or veranda here, and they're definitely not a typical part of British architecture. The main thing to bear in mind with our houses over here is how little space we have in comparison to the US, which means our homes are much more expensive per m²/ft², in turn meaning the 'nice extras' like verandas don't tend to be in the budget. We also have very temperamental weather, so it's not like we have consistently warm, dry summers to make the most of them anyway.

What many homes do have, that we call porches, are small anterooms at the front of the house, either external to the rest of the house (so porch door, porch, front door of the house - these are often PVC framed with glass walls/windows and PVC doors) or integrated (front door, porch, internal door). These are generally where most people will chuck their coats, muddy shoes, buggies (pushchairs/strollers), etc.

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BG3restart@reddit

We don't have the wraparound kind you can sit on. Ours tend to be small, storm porches designed to keep the rain and draughts from the front door, somewhere you can stand in the dry to ditch your wet coat before you go inside.

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Foundation_Wrong@reddit

Almost no one has a porch or a basement. Even houses with a cellar people don’t use them like Americans. Our houses are not built that way. Normal British houses are semi detached or in a terrace, even detached houses don’t have porches. We may have a conservatory on the back of a house, but it’s like an extra room. You should use r/spottedonrightmove

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Sensitive_Fly_7036@reddit

My house has none of those things. Where I am, it’s mostly terraced houses, and a few have porches added on but none have back porches or basements

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Madruck_s@reddit

My old terraced house had a cellar. I think it was about 100ish years old.

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Mission-Fail-422@reddit

But in reverse, do you ever see solid brick and tiled roof houses in the US?

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Mission-Fail-422@reddit

Never seen one and only ever known maybe 4 houses that had basements

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Rainking1987@reddit

I think maybe having a conservatory built onto your house is the UK equivalent. A little glass space that allows you to hang out in, and feel outdoors, without actually going out into the rain. Some people use them as dining rooms.

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MapOfIllHealth@reddit

I’d say the conservatory is a more popular addition than a porch, at least in the south where I grew up. A lot of people in the 90’s added the conservatory space to their homes, which is basically just a greenhouse attached to your home (all glass windows, not walls).

And basements just were just something we knew about from American movies

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FabulousElection4672@reddit

If you mean the outdoor covered area that you can sit and watch the world go by, the answer is no and the reason is the weather. But we do have patios and garden furniture that comes out from its cover about 6 months of the year (maybe 4 months actually). Old houses can have basement/cellars but most modern houses don’t. A porch in the UK is a small room as you enter the front door for shoes and coats.

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One_Complex6429@reddit

I've only lived in one house with a porch at the front. English style, little room to keep the weather off and hang coats. All my houses had a conservatory at the back though.

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KatVanWall@reddit

People have already said àbout the difference in the way we use the word ‘porch’ (we don’t have the weather for American-style porches really), but for basements/cellars it really depends on the terrain. Hilly areas often have a basement or ‘lower ground floor’ where you essentially enter the house on the middle floor and it’s built into the hillside so there’s a semi-basement level below. A lot of the larger Victorian terraces also have cellars. My boyfriend’s house is the big standard smallest type of terrace but it has a cellar as it’s on à hill, so there’s kitchen is on the lower ground floor with a cellar opening off it. My friends’ uni house was also a small terrace but had a cellar (not a lower ground floor, a full on regular cellar). I also had a friend when I was a kid whose family had a massive city terrace with a big cellar. In Nottingham, it’s not all that uncommon to have a literal cave of some sort under your house! Hilly places (Whitby, Peak District …) often have houses with basements. However, in the area I live in (east mids), it’s rare for new builds to have them.

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snowmanseeker@reddit

A lot of older houses have cellars, it was common to use them for things like coal storage. Lived in a Victorian end terrace house that had a creepy cellar and also a turret in the bedroom. Modern houses tend not to have cellars or basements.

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SwordTaster@reddit

Porches in the american way are obscenely rare, and basements aren't particularly common unless you love fairly inland

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DifferentWave@reddit

I think porches are different between the countries. In the US you hang out on yours? Ours tend to be small entry rooms where we keep coats and shoes. Think a buffer between the inner house and the outside world.

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Bells9831@reddit

I guess verandas that extend or wrap around the front of the house are also not a thing?

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mrbullettuk@reddit

The front statistically zero! They might exist but very unusual.

To the rear of the house a lot will have either a patio (paved area often with sitting area, bbq etc) or decking (wooden version of a patio.

Our construction is different, brick in most cases not wood and very little surrounding land house are commonly terraced or semi detached. Even the detached don’t have huge space to sides and front.

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nixtracer@reddit

People whose houses are built of wood soon come to regret it. Wood exposed to a UK climate rots.

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DifferentWave@reddit

I’m sure they exist but they’re very rare and I think are a particular style of “plantation/colonial house” from the turn of the last century. But really not something most people come across.

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Puzzleheaded-Lynx204@reddit

We use the term porch differently. A lot of houses have a small covered area in front of the front door (may or may not be enclosed) to stand in/under when it's raining; leave boots etc. That's our porch. If houses have a basement it's probably a full basement flat - these are common in Georgian and Victorian terraces but not usually detached houses as they're a city thing. Cellars aren't that common in private homes unless they're very big and old. My friend lived in a Victorian terrace that had one but it was only a few feet deep and basically only there to catch floodwater.

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Puzzleheaded-Lynx204@reddit

I think what you call a porch we'd maybe call a verandah (covered, open area for sitting out on?) but nobody has them.

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DanFraser@reddit

Nobody has them because they're damn near - if not outright - impossible to get planning permission for!

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militaryCoo@reddit

It usually wouldn't even be big enough to sit out on, it's literally about as wide as the doorframe and about as deep.

Just to keep the worst of the weather off the area right in front of the door

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Helithe@reddit

My grandparents lived in an old Victorian terraced house in Lancashire and they had a coal/root cellar. It had really steep rickety wooden stairs to it off the kitchen and was damp and really unpleasant. I wasn't allowed down there at all and it fell into disuse once my grandparents switched to electric heating and kept their veg in the kitchen.

None of the houses I lived in had basements or cellars. Porches were just small enclosed/semi enclosed entryways if you had one at all.

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paradoxbound@reddit

Up here in the rural highlands no porches but a lot of sun rooms where you can watch the torrential rain going sideways during a gale.

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Hefty_Tip7383@reddit

For the two hours of sun per annum…

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peeiayz@reddit

As a fellow Scot this made me chuckle 😂

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Hefty_Tip7383@reddit

Your porches are verandas, our porches are something else.

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SnooDonuts6494@reddit

There was huge variety. You could find a town where almost every house has all of them, and others where none exist.

Also, it depends what you mean by a porch - because there are huge varieties of those too.

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Adam_London@reddit

A porch in the UK is a small surround around the front door. The function is to protect you from the rain while you get your keys out to unlock the door. Detached 19th century houses do sometimes have American style porches, but you'll rarely see anyone sitting in them. We're more of a back garden country. Walk round central London, all those big houses that front onto the road, they have big back gardens behind them. The back porch doesn't really exist as a concept in UK, but we do have patios, decking and awnings. We have cellars, a lot of 19th century houses have cellars. We also have basement flats (below ground level, with stairs leading down from the pavement outside, they're not usually accessible via the main entrance to the building).

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pedrg@reddit

A lot of Victorian houses have cellars, though because of the climate and building approach these are almost always entirely (or very nearly entirely) underground with the entrance level of the house only inches above ground level. There will still be houses with hatches which led to chutes for coal delivery into cellars, and a reasonable proportion of cellars are made fully waterproof and converted into some form of living space - from dry and well lit storage all the way to home cinema rooms or - if there’s some natural light and enough space for an escape route - an additional bedroom.

The absence of elevated front entrances means the familiar American front porch doesn’t really fit - there’s no need for a landing from steps up to a front door, for one thing. Homes are also orientated with the outdoor space much more to the rear and almost all outdoor socialising or “sitting out” would be in a back garden (= back yard). Wooden decking at the rear, including raised decking where the land falls away to the rear of a house, and awnings are quite common - as are conservatories, relatively cheap small single-story glass and (usually) PVC extensions at the rear, for making the most of the light and view of a rear garden without being out in the rain.

In British English, “porch” has the meaning from the other comments - a space not much wider than a door or maybe two doors, as a pre-entrance for drying/removing shoes, storing umbrellas, keeping the rain off while you lock the door etc.

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Upbeat-Name-6087@reddit

We are a damp rainy windy island, that means a high water table in a lot of places, plus a lot of England is heavy clay, which expands and contracts. That makes cellars a pain in the arse to waterproof and maintain. So they aren't common in monster parts of the country.

A lot of 19th century housing stock was cheap tenament houses built for factory workers. They share both walls with neighbours and have a small footprint. There was no room for porches. Nor do we have the weather for sitting about outside most of the year. What was more common was front gardens, which let people street socialise and also grow food/flowers in the same space.

You don't really see them even on bigger houses and we did build that kind of 'colonial style' house in the warmer parts of the empire, so it's probably mostly a weather thing.

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_Nefarium@reddit

Not really, a porch for us is more so just a little bit of roof about 1.5m^2 over an exterior door to keep it dry, or a lean to cold store for potatoes and veg on the back of the house.

Cellars are incredibly rare in modern houses however many terraced city houses will have either a full cellar or coal chute. Our geography and wet climate generally doesn't lend itself to them, they tend to flood and are not good for storing anything other than coal or maybe sealed canned food and beverages in - even then it's a bad idea concerning rats unless the chutes been fully blocked off. As for why modern houses don't have them - it's expensive and water always wins.

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Xanavaris@reddit

Usually a porch is a very small front porch just a little roof over your door essentially. We don’t have big verandas/wrap around porches. Sometimes there is a small back porch but it’s more just a glass roof.

I think because it’s so cold people tend to have more enclosed spaces so you will get houses with a conservatory or sunroom, or mud room or similar.

Occasionally houses have cellars but it’s rare. Attic conversions are common.

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SocieteRoyale@reddit

Not American style large porches, some houses may have a small glass porch to take your shoes off and hang your coat. Thats more common here

My house also has a conservatory on the back which is too hot in summer and too cold in winter so not a hugely useful space except for storing my bike

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Connect-Bug9988@reddit

Most people just keep their shoes and doormats in there round my way🤣

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PootMcGroot@reddit

1800s? A large detached house? Absolutely. Pretty much all of them.

My house - probably about 1790 - has both a front stone porch entrance and a back porch entrance. I have a multi-room cellar and what was once a root cellar (ie where vegetables were stored over winter).

They became less common in the 20thC, but even old terrace homes from just before then (think Yorkshire stone, not brick) will commonly have cellars.

Anything later - ie post war - you might have a front porch, but cellars and back porches become much rarer.