HALL, a large, undivided room ; also an entrance room or passageway affording communication to other parts of a building. Originally the word was limited to the chief room of a feudal house or castle, and was applied even to the entire building, probably because in early north Europe the lord's house consisted of merely one such big room with detached out-buildings. Thus certain early houses on the border between England and Scotland, of which one remains almost intact, in the deanery at Carlisle, consisted merely of a fortified tower with one room to each floor. During the i3th and 14th centuries, as the complexity of life increased, and houses became larger and more complex, the hall still remained as the most important feature. Here was the dais where the lord and his family dined, while the retainers ate in the remaining space. Here guests were received, and here, in the earlier periods, was the house fire, built on stones in the centre of the floor, as in the existing hall of Penshurst place, Kent. The hall retained its importance into the i6th century. Then, as more and more separate small rooms, easier to heat and more private, were gradually added for sleeping, eating and resting, the importance of the hall declined. It became first a ceremonial chamber, and finally merely an entrance way; it is from this that the modern usage as a passage way derives.
The typical Tudor hall was a rectangular room, usually run ning the entire height of the building with exposed timber trusses. At Mayfield in Sussex (c. 135o), great stone arches take the place of the trusses. At one end a narrow passageway was screened off, serving as a vestibule ; the house entrance led into the passage and from there by doors through the screens into the hall. On the opposite side of the passage were the doors into the kitchen, buttery, larder and other service rooms, and above the passage the musician's gallery. At the end of the hall, opposite the screen, was the raised dais (q.v.). The hall was lighted by windows high in the wall, except at the dais end, where there was a bay window, and sometimes two. One or more great fireplaces furnished heat. The hall was usually roofed with timber trusses, although that of Bolsover castle in Derbyshire (late i6th century) is vaulted. Many of the trusses are of great richness and are of the type known as hammerbeam (q.v.), as in the great hall of Hampton Court palace 5) and that of the Middle Temple, London Halls similar to those of baronial houses were also incorporated as integral parts of other buildings such as colleges and the buildings of the great guilds, which, like many of the houses, took their names from this feature (e.g., Clothworkers' hall, Gold smiths' hall, the Guildhall, etc.). Of these the finest examples are those of New college (1386) and Christ Church (c. 1525), both at Oxford, and Trinity college, Cambridge 0604). Among the most beautiful domestic examples are Great Chalfield manor (c. 145o), Ightham Mote (c. 135o), Compton Wynyates (c. 152o), Montacute (between 158o and 1601), Burton Agnes (1602-1 o) and Hatfield house (i 6 i 1) See J. Nash, The Mansions of England in the Olden Time (1839) ; J. A. Gotch, Early Renaissance Architecture in. England (1901, new ed. 1914), and Growth of the English House (19o9) ; T. Garner and A. Stratton, Domestic Architecture of England During the Tudor Period (19i1). (T. F. H.)