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Great hall facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Eltham palace great hall

A great hall was the main room of a royal palace, a nobleman's castle or a large manor house in the Middle Ages. At that time the word great meant big. Great halls were found in France, England and Scotland and some other European countries.

Appearance

A great hall was a rectangular room between 1.5 and 3 times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. At night some members of the household might sleep on the floor of the great hall.

Examples

Two very large surviving royal halls are Westminster Hall and the Wenceslas Hall in Prague Castle. Penshurst Place in Kent, England has a hall from the 14th century. There are lots of 16th century and early 17th century halls in England, Wales and Scotland, for example those at Longleat (England), Burghley House (England), Bodysgallen Hall (Wales), Muchalls Castle (Scotland) and Crathes Castle (Scotland); however, by the late 1700s the great hall was beginning to lose its purpose over time.

Images for kids

  • Barley Hall 1

    The Great Hall in Barley Hall, York, restored to replicate its appearance in around 1483

  • Great Hall in 1906, The Abbey Sutton Courtenay

    The great hall of The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay in 1906, filled with hunting trophies

  • Stokesay Castle-21 (5738169762)

    Great Hall at Stokesay Castle

  • HorhamHall

    Plan of Horham Hall, including a screens passage, leading from the entrance porch; a dais; a bay window. The main staircase is at the dais end, and the hall was the full height of the two-storey house

  • Stirling Castle Great Hall 2016

    The Great Hall at Stirling Castle built for James IV. The larger windows lit the high table

  • The Hall at Penshurst Place from Ancestral Homes of Noted Americans by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton (1915)

    The mid-14th century Great Hall at Penshurst Place, looking towards the Screens Passage, pierced by two large rectangular doorways. Gothic arched doorways lead into service quarters, the Kitchen, Buttery and Pantry

  • Doorways to service rooms, Old Rectory, Warton - geograph.org.uk - 166428

    The classic mediaeval layout of three doorways to service rooms, at the Old Rectory, Warton. These doorways would originally have been hidden by the wooden screen of the screens passage. The central doorway leads to an outside kitchen. The other two doors are to the pantry and buttery

  • Interior Great Hall

    Great Hall of Stirling Castle, Scotland, view towards the north showing screens passage, with minstrels' gallery above

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