Hall house
The hall house is a type of vernacular house traditional in many parts of England, Wales, Ireland and lowland Scotland, as well as northern Europe, during the Middle Ages, centring on a hall. Usually timber-framed, some high status examples were built in stone.
Unaltered hall houses are almost unknown. Where they have survived, they have almost always been significantly changed and extended by successive owners over the generations.
Origins
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Crook_Hall_medieval_hall_interior.jpg/170px-Crook_Hall_medieval_hall_interior.jpg)
In
A significant house needs both public and private areas. The public area is the place for living: cooking, eating, meeting and playing, while private space is for withdrawing and for storing valuables. A source of heat is required, and in northern latitudes walls are also needed to keep the weather out and to keep in the heat.[2] By about 1400, in lowland Britain, with changes in settlement patterns and agriculture, people were thinking of houses as permanent structures rather than temporary shelter. According to the locality, they built stone or timber-framed houses with wattle and daub or clay infill. The designs were copied by their neighbours and descendants in the tradition of vernacular architecture. [a] They were sturdy and some have survived over five hundred years. Hall houses built after 1570 are rare.[4]
The open hearth found in a hall house created heat and smoke. A high ceiling drew the smoke upwards, leaving a relatively smoke-free void beneath.[5][6] Later hall houses were built with chimneys and flues. In earlier ones, these were added as alterations and additional flooring often installed. This, and the need for staircases to reach each of the upper storeys, led to much innovation and variety in floor plans. The hall house, having started in the Middle Ages as a home for a lord and his community of retainers, permeated to the less well-off during the early modern period. During the sixteenth century, the rich crossed what Brunskill describes as the "polite threshold" and became more likely to employ professionals to design their homes.[7]
General description
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Grundriss_Plan_form_Simple_hall_family.svg/250px-Grundriss_Plan_form_Simple_hall_family.svg.png)
In its earliest and simplest form the medieval hall house would be a four-bay cruck-framed structure, with the open hall taking up the two bays in the middle of the building. An open hearth would be in the middle of the hall, its smoke rising to a vent in the roof. Two external doors on each side of the hall formed a cross passage. One end bay at the "screens end" or "lower end" of the hall would contain two rooms commonly called the pantry, used for storing food, and the buttery used for storing drink. These were intentionally unheated. The rooms in the "upper end" bay formed the private space. This layout was analogous to that found in the great houses of the day, the difference being merely that of scale.
The rooms on the ground floor of the private space, were often known as parlours while the upper floor provided rooms called solars. The upper rooms would be reached in the simplest buildings by means of a ladder or steep companionway.[b][8] The solars often stretched beyond the outer wall of the ground floor rooms, jettying out at one end or else at both ends of the building. As the hall itself had no upper floor within it, its outer walls always stood straight, without jettying.[9]
- Single ended hall plans
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Grundriss_Single_Ended_Hall_house_105b.svg/150px-Grundriss_Single_Ended_Hall_house_105b.svg.png)
Here a two-storey wing is attached to one end of the hall. This can project beyond one side wall or both side walls of the hall, or sometimes just the upper storey is jettied beyond the side wall. There were multiple solutions as to where the staircase was placed.[7]
- Double ended hall plans
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Grundriss_Double-Ended_Hall_house_105b.svg/150px-Grundriss_Double-Ended_Hall_house_105b.svg.png)
The open hall is flanked by two two-storey extension. Together they can give the appearance of an H-shape as at Little Moreton Hall or a U-shape as is found in Cambridgeshire. The Clothiers' houses of the West Riding of Yorkshire were built with elaborate gables[7]
- Wealden houses
Wealden houses are a specific form of the double ended hall plan. They are built of timber and at ground floor level the wings do not project being the width of the hall in length. The upper-storeys of the wings are jettied out, and the roof-line follows this projection.[7]
Later alterations
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Horham_Hall_blueprint.png/250px-Horham_Hall_blueprint.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Grundriss_Hall_house_105c_Aisled.svg/250px-Grundriss_Hall_house_105c_Aisled.svg.png)
The vast majority of those hall houses which have survived have changed significantly over the centuries. In almost all cases the open hearth of the hall house was abandoned during the early modern period and a chimney built which reached from the new hearth to above the roof. This was created in the vicinity of the cross passage, and sometimes this added chimney actually blocked the cross passage.[6] Once the clearance within the hall was no longer needed for smoke from the central hearth, the hall itself would often be divided, with a floor being inserted which connected all the upper rooms.
Timber framed hall houses often had the infilling between their structural timbers replaced several times. While the timbers themselves were the strongest part of the building, it is unusual for all to have survived without replacement. In many cases whole outer walls have been replaced with solid brick or with solid stone. Usually a thatched roof was turned into one of slates or tiles.
A successful building was likely to be extended to follow the fashion or to add needed additional accommodation, and it is even possible for a medieval hall house to be hidden within an apparently much later building and to go unrecognized for what it is, until alteration or demolition reveals the tell-tale smoke-blackened roof timbers of the original open hall.[10]
Materials
The construction techniques used in vernacular architecture always were dependent on the materials available, and hall houses were no exceptions.
Hearths, smoke bays and fireplaces
In a two-wing hall house, with the hall open to the roof, smoke accumulated in the roofspace before exiting through louvres or raised tiles. Placing the hearth at the lower end of the hall was deliberate because combustion could be controlled by varying the through draught between the two doors.[6]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Grundriss_Hall_with_Smoke_bay.thumb.corr.svg/200px-Grundriss_Hall_with_Smoke_bay.thumb.corr.svg.png)
The next phase was to jetty out the first floor (American English: second floor) private accommodation into the open hall creating a half floor. The smoke rose into the remaining space into a smoke bay. The house benefitted from the extra space created, and the extended chambers benefitted from the extra heat. The use of smoke hoods enabled the smoke bays to be compressed further. In Surrey smoke bays were introduced in the early 16th century while in the North it was later,
A brick built
The design and total function of the chimney depended on the size of the house or cottage and its location. English fires never became like the continental tiled
reflected the heat forward and controlled the unwelcome side draughts. Unsurprisingly the hearth migrated to a central wall and became enclosed at the sides. The earliest![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Hall_with_chimney.floored.svg/200px-Hall_with_chimney.floored.svg.png)
The fireplace is a three-sided incombustible box containing a grate that allows an updraught and a controlled flue. It is most suited to burning
Examples
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Tree_House%2C_103_High_Street%2C_Crawley_%28IoE_Code_363351%29.jpg/250px-Tree_House%2C_103_High_Street%2C_Crawley_%28IoE_Code_363351%29.jpg)
Unaltered hall houses are almost unknown. A large number of former hall-houses do still exist and many are cared for by the
Ancient Priors
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Ancient_Priors%2C_49-51_High_Street%2C_Crawley_%28IoE_Ref_363347%29.jpg/220px-Ancient_Priors%2C_49-51_High_Street%2C_Crawley_%28IoE_Ref_363347%29.jpg)
The
In Cheshire Willot Hall, Bramall Hall and Little Moreton Hall all noted for their black and white half timbered appearance, are extended from an initial hall-house. And in Merseyside Speke Hall and Rufford Old Hall similarly benefited from agricultural prosperity.
Rufford Old Hall
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Rufford_Old_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2042985.jpg/220px-Rufford_Old_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2042985.jpg)
The timber-framed hall house with great hall, in a late
Ufford Hall
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Ufford_Hall.jpg/220px-Ufford_Hall.jpg)
Plas Uchaf
West country
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Geograph_2862485_Whitestaunton_Manor.jpg/220px-Geograph_2862485_Whitestaunton_Manor.jpg)
Old Shute House (known as Shute Barton between about 1789 and the 20th century), located at Shute, near Colyton, Axminster, Devon, is one of the more important extant non-fortified manor houses of the Middle Ages. It was built about 1380 as a hall house and was greatly expanded in the late 16th century and partly demolished in 1785. The original 14th-century house survives, although much altered.[49] Whitestaunton Manor in south Somerset was built in the 15th century as a hall house and has been designated as a Grade I listed building.[50] It consists of an east–west range with two wings which were added later.[51]
Northumberland
Aydon Hall and Featherstone Castle in Northumberland were stone-built hall houses. The owners applied for permission to crenellate to protect the buildings from the marauding Scottish insurgents. The original halls became part of substantial castles- which later, with the Act of Union became grand country houses. Harewood Castle is a 12th-century stone hall house and courtyard fortress, located on the Harewood Estate, Harewood, in Leeds, West Yorkshire.
See also
- List of hall houses in England
- Hall (concept)
- Great hall
- Hall and parlor house
- Low German hall house
- Middle German house
- Wealden hall house
- Vernacular architecture
References
- Notes
- ^ Ronald Brunskill [3] describes vernacular architecture as:
...a building designed by an amateur without any training in design; the individual will have been guided by a series of conventions built up in his locality, paying little attention to what may be fashionable. The function of the building would be the dominant factor, aesthetic considerations, though present to some small degree, being quite minimal. Local materials would be used as a matter of course, other materials being chosen and imported quite exceptionally.
- ^ A companionway was often fitted into a shallow cupboard set into one end the partition separating the private rooms from the hall. It would be a straight flight of treads set into a box frame, differing from a ladder in that it was fixed in place. An alternative was the spiral stair case where solid timber steps would span between the timber wall and a mast like newell. This would twist 180 deg from floor to floor
- Citations
- ^ John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 8
- ^ Brunskill 2004, p. 40.
- ^ Brunskill 2000, p. 27,28.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, p. 124.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, p. 112,113.
- ^ a b c d e Brunskill 2000, p. 122,123.
- ^ a b c d Brunskill 2000, p. 104,105.
- ^ Brunskill 2000, p. 124,125.
- ^ Brunskill 2000a, p. 54.
- ^ David J. Swindells, Restoring period timber-framed houses (1987), p. 165
- ^ Brunskill 2000, p. 36.
- ^ W. Douglas Simpson, Exploring Castles (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 51
- ^ Brunskill 2004, p. 116.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, pp. 112, 113.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, pp. 112, 113, 115.
- ^ "coal, 5a". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2010.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, p. 115.
- ^ Brunskill 2004, pp. 115, 116.
- ^ a b c d Hygate 1994, p. 3.
- ^ a b "Minter's, The High Street, Crawley". West Sussex Gazette newspaper. West Sussex County Times Ltd (now part of Johnston Press PLC). 14 September 1978.
- ^ "The Ancient Priors at Crawley". West Sussex Gazette and South of England Advertiser newspaper. West Sussex County Times Ltd (now part of Johnston Press PLC). 9 June 1960.
- ^ Goepel 1980, p. 4.
- ^ Gwynne 1990, p. 40.
- ^ Volke 1989, p. 53.
- ^ a b c Goldsmith 1987, §29.
- ^ Gwynne 1990, p. 58.
- ^ Hygate 1994, p. 1.
- ^ a b Harris, Roland B. (December 2008). "Crawley Historic Character Assessment Report" (PDF). Sussex Extensive Urban Survey (EUS). English Heritage in association with Crawley Borough Council. p. 26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 June 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
- ^ a b c Hygate 1994, p. 9.
- ^ Bastable 1983, §33.
- ^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 7 May 2024.
- ^ Hygate 1994, p. 12.
- ^ Listed Buildings in West Lancashire Archived 2011-06-06 at the Wayback Machine, West Lancashire District Council
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84359-285-3
- ^ Farrer, William; Brownbill, J, eds. (1911). Rufford. British History Online. pp. 119–128. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ "Rufford Old Hall". Listed Buildings Online. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
- ^ Farrer, William; Brownbill, J, eds. (1911). Bretherton. British History Online. pp. 102–108. Retrieved 21 September 2011.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ a b Sandon, Eric (1977), Suffolk Houses, A Study of Domestic Architecture, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Baron Publishing, 1977, p. 175
- ^ Emery, Anthony (2000), Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, Vol. II, Cambridge University Press, p. 24
- ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1961), The Buildings of England: Suffolk, London: Penguin Books, p. 203
- ^ Cook, Olive & Edwin Smith (1983), The English House through Seven Centuries, Overlook Press, p. 69
- ISBN 0-571-11625-6.
Despite its relatively small size this house was of palatial significance in relation to its time and place
- ^ a b c d e f Monroe, L (1933). "Plas Ucha, Llangar, Merioneth". Arch Camb. pp. 81–87.
- ^ Smith, Peter; Lloyd, Ffrangcon (1965). "Plas-Ucha, Llangar, Corwen". Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 1964. Vol. 12. London: The Ancient Monuments Society. pp. 97–112.
- ^ Smith, Peter (1988). "Aisle-truss and hammer-beam roofed houses". Houses of the Welsh Countryside - A study in historical geography (Second enlarged ed.). London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 94–95.
- ^ a b "Plas Uchaf; Plas Ucha, Cynwyd, Cynwyd". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
- ^ Cited by Smith/LLoyd as "Edward Llwyd, Parochilia (ed. R. H. Morris), II, p. 56"
- ^ "1871 census Llangar". GENUKI - UK & Ireland Genealogy. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
- ^ Cooper, Nicholas; Mannez, Pru; Blaylock, Stuart, Shute Barton, Devon: Historic Building Analysis and Archaeological Survey 2008, Exeter Archaeology Report no. 08.80, produced for the National Trust
- ^ Historic England. "Whitestaunton Manor (1250783)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
- ^ Historic England. "Whitestaunton Manor (190386)". Research records (formerly PastScape). Retrieved 16 December 2012.
- Bibliography
- Brunskill, R.W. (2000). Vernacular Architecture: An illustrated Handbook. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN -0-571-19503-2.
- Bastable, Roger (1983). Crawley: A Pictorial History. Chichester: Phillimore & Co. ISBN 0-85033-503-5.
- Brunskill, Ronald (2000a). 'Rural houses and cottages; Wealden and other open-hall houses' in Houses and Cottages of Britain: Origins and Development of Traditional Buildings. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-575-07122-3.
- Brunskill, R.W. (2004). Traditional Buildings of Britain: an introduction to Vernacular Architecture. London: Orion Books. ISBN 0-304-36676-5.
- Goepel, J. (1980). Development of Crawley. Crawley: Crawley Borough Council.
- Goldsmith, Michael (1987). Crawley and District in Old Picture Postcards. Zaltbommel: European Library. ISBN 90-288-4525-9.
- Gwynne, Peter (1990). A History of Crawley (1st ed.). Chichester: Phillimore & Co. ISBN 0-85033-718-6.
- Hygate, Nâdine (1994). 49, High Street, Crawley. Horsham: Performance Publications.
- Volke, Gordon, ed. (1989). Historic Buildings of West Sussex. Partridge Green: Ravette Publishing. ISBN 1-85304-199-8.
Further reading
- Ruth Goodman (2020). The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything. Liveright. pp. 72–87. ISBN 978-1631497636. (detailed description of co-evolution of heating fuels and hall architecture in England)