Task 2
• What is the importance of a "Great Hall" in a castle?
In most castles, mostly smaller or earlier castles, a great hall was one of the only
rooms apart from kitchens, stables, stores and so on. In many cases it was the only
room you could be in without cooking or with the horses. In the great hall, you held
many formal events, meeting with important people, sleeping and eating. Even in
the upper class castles, people were very active, spending a lot of their leisure time
outside rather than being in the hall.
• Describe how heating was accomplished in the Medieval halls.
The great halls were heated by open fires in the middle of the room, the smoke rose
through the hall to the roof, and was vented outside through a vent called a ‘louver’
which was basically a whole in the roof with a cover to keep rain out.
• Explain how the main bedrooms and guest rooms were laid out in the castle.
In the earliest castles the family slept at the extreme upper end of the hall, beyond
the dais, from which the sleeping quarters were typically separated by only a curtain
or screen. Sometimes castles with ground-floor halls had their great chamber, where
the lord and lady slept, in a separate wing at the dais end of the hall, over a
storeroom, matched at the other end, over the buttery and pantry, by a chamber for
the eldest son and his family, for guests, or for the castle steward.
• What were squints used for?
Squints were peepholes concealed in wall decorations and the owner or steward
would look in and keep an eye on what on below.