§ 35. In its simplest form, the porch is simply a protection to the doorway which it covers. The timber porches, often beautiful works of art, which are common in Essex and other timber-growing parts of England and Wales, can hardly have served any very practical use, although, like stone porches, they have side-benches, on which worshippers could rest. But, from the days when the south porch of Canterbury cathedral was resorted to by litigants from every part of the kingdom, the church porch was a common place for the transaction of much secular business. Hence, no doubt, it became a permanent stone structure, usually roofed with wood, but sometimes vaulted, as at Barnack, or covered, as in some of the churches round Doncaster, by a high pitched roof of stone slabs. In many later medieval churches, the size of the porch increased, and it was vaulted with elaborate ribbed ceilings, or, as at Lavenham in Suffolk, with fan vaulting. There may sometimes have been, as there was at Canterbury and possibly at Bradford on Avon, an altar in the porch. At South Pool in Devon, the bench which runs along the east wall is raised in the middle, and forms an altar table. A broad south aisle was built in the fifteenth century, but was stopped at the east wall of the porch. A small window, now filled in, directly above the altar, commanded a view of the aisle and the south altar of the chancel from the porch, and was closed on the side of the aisle by an iron grille. Such altars, however, must have been very rare. One may suggest that the altar at South Pool contained relics, on which oaths were taken by those who came to the porch to settle business or disputes which might be terminated by mutual agreement, without being brought before the regular courts. [Illustration: Fig. 9. St Mary's, Beverley: south porch.]