Great Britain, Warwick, Lord Leicester Hospital | Banqueting Hall Professor Lynn Courtenay

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Great Britain, Warwick, Lord Leicester Hospital, Interior of Great Hall looking south		Great Britain, Warwick, Lord Leicester Hospital, Interior of Great Hall looking north		Great Britain (England), London, Westminster Palace, Great Hall, Detail of decorative spandrel, ca. 1395–1398

The major roof members do not have elaborate mouldings as in the Guildhall (see below), or as at St. Mary's Hall, Coventry; however, they do have simple chamfers achieved by cutting across and removing the square edge of the main timbers at a 45-degree angle. Nonetheless, remains of tracery infill occur in the spandrels between the arch braces and wall posts beneath the tie beams and relate to the decorative tendencies of roofs in the later Middle Ages (cf. the Pilgrim's Hall, St. Mary's Hall, Coventry and Westminster Hall, London).

Each end of the hall differs and reflects the long-established tradition of the social distinction between the upper end (high status) and lower (service) end of the hall. Simply put, the designated upper end of all medieval halls is reserved for those of the highest rank, the lord, king, nobles, or in this case, guild officials, perhaps something like rather gaudy craftsmen described humorously in Geoffrey Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Privileged persons would thus sit at the high table, so called because often it was literally higher, i.e. placed on a raised platform called a dais. In grander halls, both those at ground level or on an upper floor, the dais was often approached by several steps as, for example, at the south end of the great hall at Westminster Palace (where the dais was reinstated in the restorations of Sir Charles Barry ca. 1850) or, the impressive first floor guildhall, St. Mary's Hall, Coventry, both dating to the reign of Richard II.

In contrast to the upper end, the lower end of a traditional medieval hall was identifiable by the presence of two wide doorways leading to a service cross passage and thence to a pantry, or larder, a buttery for wine, and accessible in some way to a kitchen and scullery. In many cases a gallery for minstrels and musicians was accommodated above the service passage at the lower end. Generally speaking features like niches with sculpture, stained glass, oriel windows, wall fireplaces, carved screens and more elaborate furnishings would adorn the higher status end of a hall much in the same way that the area of the choir is traditionally more ornate than the nave of a church.

At the upper end of the Lord Leicester Banqueting Hall there is no dais but there is a close-studded panelled wall suggesting a kind of canopy created by coving, (curved walling of timber and plaster). Moreover, empty mortises in the soffit of the first tie beam suggest a former internal screen at this end near the entrance, perhaps to protect the occupants from draughts. Curiously, however, there are no fireplaces here as would have been normal in any residential hall of the period.

The lower end wall is filled with simple wide panels and has two doors that lead to a cross passage with access to the exterior and to the buttery and pantry and normally to a passage to a kitchen. At Lord Leicester the disposition of this area is unclear today, since the town walls constrain the site to the west and communication to a kitchen at this end of the passage seems unlikely. At the rear of the present cross passage are three openings, two leading to a service area and a third to the east communicating to the west end of the Master's House, which has been much altered and restored in the 19th century. The west wall of the Banquet Hall is modern, but the east wall seen from both the interior (evidently refaced) and the exterior yard indicate that timber- frame construction was used beginning about half way up the masonry and rising to a plate, the mid-rail, about 10' above the present floor level, i.e. to the level of the windows.

A battlemented moulding enriches the mid-rail; the wall posts are tenoned and pegged into this plate with the battlemented moulding applied at the front face. Since the widows, mid-rail, upper wall plate, and wall posts of the roof trusses are integral, we can conclude that this is the primary disposition of the hall framing on the interior. It is also very likely that wooden corbels originally existed for the wall posts whose inner ends pass through the mid-rail and are inelegantly truncated. The external east wall of the hall reveals the same framing as inside, consisting of the wall posts, arched down braces and the wall plate at mid level.



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