V. THE ORIGIN OF THE DOMESTIC HALL.

The invariable and, indeed, the only essential feature of the English mediæval house is the Great Hall. It is the centre alike of the castle and the manor-house round which the lesser buildings are grouped. In Saxon times the great or mead hall was, so far as the evidence goes, almost always built of wood and closely resembled in form and structure the great aisled barns, which have carried on the old tradition without a break almost to the present day. Some indication of their remote and semi-barbaric origin is to be found in the rude method of roof construction, for while something in the form of a truss is always visible, yet it is scarcely ever framed together to form a rigid whole. On the other hand certain peculiarities, born of a long and intimate acquaintance with the material used, are also observable, the most striking being the constant practice of planting the posts or uprights in the contrary position to that occupied when they were living trees, and thus preventing the rise of the moisture from the damp earth. It is a hall of this type that is described in the early Mercian poem of Beowulf as the scene of the great struggle with the demon Grendel.

For some time after the coming of the Normans, the conquering race was little more than an army of occupation, a state of affairs which was unduly prolonged by the internecine warfare of the Great Anarchy. The direct outcome of this unsettled and unnatural state was the erection of the numerous Norman castles, built purely for defence, of which so many were subsequently destroyed by King Henry II. The Norman castle at this date consisted of a stone keep with a large enclosure or bailey, surrounded by a wooden palisade or stone curtain and occupied by the timber dwellings of the lord and his retainers. It cannot be too much insisted on that the keep-tower hardly ever represents the ordinary dwelling-house of the lord of the castle. It was, in fact, only made use of for habitation when the stronghold was in a state of siege, and it is probable that their enforced residence there was little relished by its inmates, as the confined space and limited accommodation would lead one to expect. It is consequently futile to attempt to trace in the internal arrangements of the keep-tower the origin of the domestic hall. Even at the Tower of London, where the Conqueror or his successor built an immense keep, using the south-east angle of the Roman fortifications to enclose their bailey, a great hall was erected at an early date against the southern curtain.

In three of the early Norman castles the great hall still remains standing, at any rate in part. At Richmond, Yorkshire, it adjoins the curtain on the south side, and is apparently of earlier date than the keep at Christ Church, Twynham which stands on the east or river front of the castle; while at Wolvesley, by Winchester, the ruined Norman hall is ascribed to Bishop Henry of Blois.

The comparatively small number of halls of this date remaining is some evidence that the majority of these structures were of wood, and there is documentary evidence that in several important cases, as at Hertford and Pleshy, the halls were still of this material at the time of their destruction in the seventeenth century.

The Norman conquerors of England brought with them their own architecture, and must necessarily, at any rate at first, have introduced their own masons and craftsmen to carry it out. The wealth of the great Saxon abbeys was largely put to this use by their new owners, for the Norman prelates, accustomed to the glories of Jumièges and Caen, would not tolerate the insignificant proportions of Saxon building, and the result was perhaps one of the greatest eras of local building activity the world has seen. The great Benedictine houses, whose numbers so largely increased in the first few decades succeeding the Conquest, built not only large churches but also conventual buildings on a corresponding scale. The conventual establishment consisted of the claustral block, occupied by the monks themselves and grouped round a central cloister, and a number of subsidiary and outlying blocks of which the infirmary and guest-house were the chief, quite detached from the main building. All except the very richest monasteries found it impossible to reconstruct at once the whole of these buildings in stone, and consequently we find in many instances the claustral block only was erected in this material, while the infirmary and guest-house, as a temporary expedient, were constructed of timber. The truth of this is evidenced by the discovery in several instances (e.g. Kirkstall and Waverley) of the original posts of the early infirmary hall encased in later masonry.

Now, the domestic portions of a monastery fulfilled most if not all of the functions of a mediæval house, or rather cluster of houses, as in each case the claustral block, the infirmary, and guest-house possessed its great hall, its separate kitchen, and the usual adjuncts. At a somewhat later date in the abbot’s or prior’s lodging yet another complete dwelling was added to the list. With regard to the guest-house particularly, it was in intention and fact an ordinary dwelling-house on a large scale. The inviolability of monastic property even in the dark period of the Great Anarchy has preserved more trace of the early arrangement of these buildings than is to be found in most of the purely secular houses of the same early date. The superior wealth and greater culture of the Church tended to make it the leader in domestic architecture no less than in ecclesiastical. All through the Middle Ages the purely secular-house plan showed a tendency to a closer approximation to the monastic type, until the quadrangular dwelling of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries becomes almost its exact counterpart even to the cloister alleys on each side, the place of the great church being taken by the gatehouse. It is consequently amongst the monastic remains of the country, and not amongst the Norman keeps, that we are most likely to recover the early type of the domestic hall.

The conventual plan affords examples of two very different types of hall. The first is that almost always adopted for the great frater or dining hall in the claustral block, and is a plain rectangular apartment solidly built of stone; the second type is found only in the infirmary or guest-houses, and is in the form of a nave with one or two aisles.

We have shown that the frater was part of the block first rebuilt by the Norman abbots and priors. It was consequently built in stone after the Norman fashion by Norman masons. The infirmary and guest-halls on the contrary were commonly first constructed of wood, and consequently present all the features of native planning in that material. In most cases this latter class of building was subsequently reconstructed in the more durable material, but even then in many instances the original form was preserved, and stone columns and arcades like the aisles of a church took the place of the original barn-like structure of the Saxon type.

Fig. 25.—PLANS OF HALLS OF WINCHESTER CASTLE, YORK GUILDHALL AND OAKHAM CASTLE.

Drawn by

A. W. Clapham.

Turning now to the contemporary castle-building, we find precisely the same varying plans in common use. The three halls mentioned above, at Richmond, Christchurch, and Wolvesley, follow the model of the monastic frater, while the halls at Oakham, Warnford (Hants), and probably Westminster are examples of the aisle type, which survived in isolated instances right through the Middle Ages, one of the latest examples, the Guildhall of York, being an interesting return to the timber originals of this class of structure.

Fig. 26.—PLANS OF HALLS OF ASHBY CASTLE, HERTFORD CASTLE, AND WARNFORD.

Drawn by

A. W. Clapham.

The aisled hall is so uncommon a feature in purely domestic architecture that a brief reference to the most important examples will be of value in this connection. Four examples at least remain intact, the well-known structure at Oakham (65 ft. by 43½ ft.) being the earliest. The great hall of Winchester Castle is a thirteenth-century building, five bays long (111 ft. by 56 ft.), and another example of similar date is to be found at Bishop Auckland, where, with the addition of a clerestory, it now does duty as a chapel. The Guildhall at York dates from the fifteenth century, and its long ranges of oak columns and handsome roof are exceedingly effective. (See p. 68.) The ruined examples include the halls of Ashby-de-la-Zouche (56½ ft. by 38 ft.) and Warkworth (58 ft. long, with one aisle only), the latter a thirteenth-century structure with a later porch and traces of a central hearth. Lastly the timber hall of Hertford Castle, which has entirely disappeared, bore a close resemblance on plan to the stone structure at Ashby Castle. The hall of Nurstead Court, Kent, has been destroyed, and that at Leicester Castle and at the “Savoy,” Denham, Bucks, have been cut up into rooms and much altered.

These halls are, however, chiefly of interest as examples of an ancient and discarded method of construction, and it is to the other type that we must turn for the true origins of the domestic hall.

The finest remaining example of an early monastic frater is to be found at St. Martin’s Priory, Dover. It forms a hall 101 ft. long by 27 ft. wide, and is lit by a range of eight windows on each side. Though St. Martin’s was never more than a cell of Christchurch, Canterbury, these dimensions compare favourably with those of the secular buildings of the same class. The hall of Christchurch Castle, Twynham, was 70 ft. by 25 ft., and Scolland Hall, Richmond, 79 ft. by 26 ft. Wolvesley Castle Hall was, however, larger, being 135 ft. by 29 ft. In the internal economy of the monastic frater no less than in its plan we may recognise the prototype of the domestic hall. At the east end was the dais for the abbot’s table, at the west the screens masking the entrance from the kitchen and cloister. It has been asserted that the Norman builders placed the windows of their halls high in the walls for fear of draughts, but in the monastic frater we find them in the same position, for the adjoining pent-house roof of the cloister prevented any other arrangement, and here again it seems likely that the secular but copied the monastic fashion.

A characteristic feature of the later monastic frater-house is the reader’s pulpit from which one of the brethren during meal time read edifying extracts from the lives of the saints and similar works. In the Norman fraters, however, this feature seldom appears in structural form. There is no trace of it at Dover, and none likewise in the plans of Lewes and Castle Acre. In the late twelfth century, however, it became universal, and is generally enclosed in a square projection near the dais end of the frater, approached by a flight of stairs in the thickness of the wall.

In position and outward form it approximates closely to the domestic oriel, and one is tempted to suggest it as the true original of this much-discussed feature of the secular plan which, it may be noted (like the pulpit itself), never appears in early work. In any case the beautiful oriel formerly existing in the infirmary at Easby Abbey is one of the earliest known examples of the feature, and implies its monastic origin.

One other point may be noted in conclusion. According to monastic rules, the frater was never supposed to be artificially heated, and consequently it was left to the unaided secular mind to invent something new, or to adhere to the ancient form of the central hearth. The secular mind chose the easier course, and only in occasional instances like that at Christchurch do we find a proper fireplace and chimney in the great hall.

Even the final destruction of the monasteries, under Henry VIII., did not entirely terminate their influence on English domestic work. Numerous abbeys and priories, of which Ford and Laycock are familiar examples, were transformed into dwelling-houses by their first lay proprietors. After the destruction of the conventual church, the claustral block, with one or more of the cloister alleys retained, and the chapter-house used as a private chapel, became the prototype of a numerous class of houses which remained in general favour throughout Elizabethan and Jacobean times; and even in the throes of dissolution monasticism left a deep and lasting mark on the architecture of the country.

—A. W. C.

SIR THOMAS MORE’S HOUSE AT CHELSEA

Fig. 27.—SIR THOMAS MORE’S FAMILY AT CHELSEA.

Drawn by

Holbein.