Portsmouth's shipping trade was all but dead by the latter half of the nineteenth century but the port maintained a vital shipbuilding business. Thomas Hough, a ship carpenter, lived in the large house at the corner of Horse Lane and Jefferson Street for nearly half a century from 1851 to 1896. Because most ships were still built of wood, tradesmen such as Thomas Hough were rarely out of work. Hough did try running a ship chandlery here in the 1860s, but eventually came back to what he knew best, carpentry
The house probably assumed its present exterior appearance around the time of the Civil War. Underneath, however, in both the northern and southern ends, there are unmistakable features of two eighteenth-century buildings. It is known that in 1813 two separate structures stood on this site, a dwelling and an out-building, possibly a barn or stable. Hough may have incorporated these into the remodeled building after he bought the property in the 1850s. Today Hough House serves as a residence hall for interns and students who come to Strawbery Banke to study its history architecture, archaeology and the decorative arts.