Great Hall

A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. At that time the word "great" simply meant big, and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. In the medieval period the room would simply have been referred to as the "hall", unless the building also had a secondary hall, but the term "great hall" has been predominant for surviving rooms of this type for several centuries, to distinguish them from the different type of hall found in post-medieval houses. Great halls were found especially in France, England and Scotland, but similar rooms were also found in some other European countries.

A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. It was entered through a screens passage at one end, and had windows on one of the long sides, often including a large bay window. There was often a minstrels' gallery above the screens passage. At the other end of the hall was the dais where the high table was situated. The lord's family's more private rooms lay beyond the dais end of the hall, and the kitchen, buttery and pantry were on the opposite side of the screens passage.

Even royal and noble residences had few living rooms until late in the Middle Ages, and a great hall was a multifunctional room. It was used for receiving guests and it was the place where the household would dine together, including the lord of the house, his gentleman attendants and at least some of the servants. At night some members of the household might sleep on the floor of the great hall.

The hall would originally have a central hearth, with the smoke rising through the hall to a vent in the roof; later, chimneys were added, and it would then have one of the largest fireplaces of the palace, manor house or castle, frequently large enough to walk and stand inside. The hearth was used for heating and also for some of the cooking, although for larger structures a medieval kitchen would customarily lie on a lower level for the bulk of cooking. Commonly the fireplace would have an elaborate overmantel with stone or wood carvings or even plasterwork which might contain coats of arms, heraldic mottoes (usually in Latin), caryatids or other adornment. In the upper halls of French manor houses, the fireplaces were usually very large and elaborate. Typically, the great hall had the most beautiful decorations in it, as well as on the window frame mouldings on the outer wall. Many French manor houses have very beautifully decorated external window frames on the large mullioned windows that light the hall. This decoration clearly marked the window as belonging to the lord's private hall. It was where guests slept.

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