A moot hall is a meeting or assembly building, traditionally to decide local issues.
In Anglo-Saxon England, a low ring-shaped earthwork served as a moot hill or moot mound, where the elders of the hundred would meet to take decisions. Some of these acquired permanent buildings, known as moot halls. However, many moot halls are on relatively new sites within later settlements.
- There are moot halls in:
- Aldeburgh
- Appleby-in-Westmorland
- Brampton
- Colchester
- Daventry
- Elstow (near Bedford)
- Hexham
- Holton le Moor
- Keswick
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Steeple Bumpstead
- Maldon, Essex
- Wirksworth
- There are also Moot hills
- Dagenham
- Godalming
- Central Milton Keynes (Secklow Mound)
- various sites in Wiltshire
- Kilmacolm
- Barony and Castle of Giffen, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
- Lambroughton, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
- Lawthorn, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
Famous quotes containing the words moot and/or hall:
“For I am shave as neigh as any frere.
But yit I praye unto youre curteisye:
Beeth hevy again, or elles moot I die.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Her cabined, ample spirit,
It fluttered and failed for breath.
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)