Great Hall - Examples

Examples

Many great halls survive. Two very large surviving royal halls are Westminster Hall and the Vladislav Hall in Prague Castle (although the latter was only used for public events, never used as a great hall here described). Penshurst Place in Kent, England has a little altered 14th century example. Surviving 16th and early 17th century specimens in England, Wales and Scotland are numerous, for example those at Longleat (England), Burghley House (England), Bodysgallen Hall (Wales), Muchalls Castle (Scotland) and Crathes Castle (Scotland); however, by the late 18th century the great hall was beginning to lose its purpose. The greater centralization of power in royal hands meant that men of good social standing were less inclined to enter the service of a lord in order to obtain his protection. As the social gap between master and servant grew, there was less reason for them to dine together and servants were banished from the hall. In fact, servants were not usually allowed to use the same staircases as nobles to access the great hall of larger castles in early times; for example, the servants' staircases are still extant in places such as Muchalls Castle. The other living rooms in country houses became more numerous, specialized and important, and by the late 17th century the halls of many new houses were simply vestibules, passed through to get to somewhere else, but not lived in. Other great halls like that at Bank Hall in Lancashire were downsized to create two rooms.

Many colleges at Durham, Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews universities have halls on the great hall model which are still used as dining rooms on a daily basis, the largest in such use being that of University College, Durham. So do the Inns of Court in London and King's College School in Wimbledon. The "high table" (often on a small dais at the top of the hall, farthest away from the screens passage) seats dons (at the universities) and Masters of the Bench (at the Inns of Court), whilst students (at the universities) and barristers or students (at the Inns of Court) dine at tables placed at right angles to the high table and running down the body of the hall, thus reproducing the hierarchical arrangement of the medieval household.