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
In Old English, a "hall" is simply a large room enclosed by a roof and walls, and in Anglo-Saxon England simple one-room buildings, with a single hearth in the middle of the floor for cooking and warmth, were the usual residence of a lord of the manor and his retainers. The whole community was used to eating and sleeping in the hall. This is the hall as Beowulf understood it. Over several centuries the hall developed into a building which provided more than one room, giving some privacy to its more important residents.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. 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. They were sturdy and some have survived over five hundred years. Hall houses built after 1570 are rare.
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. 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.
General description
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. 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.
;Single ended hall plans
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.
;Double ended hall plans
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
;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.
Later alterations
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. 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.
Materials
The construction techniques used in vernacular architecture always were dependent on the materials available, and hall houses were no exceptions. Stone, flint, cobble, brick and earth when available could be used to build walls that would support the mass of the roof structure. Alternatively, a cruck or a box frame structure of timber was built and this could be infilled with cob or be panelled with timber, tiles, or wattle and daub. Depending on the local tradition and availability thatched and stone roofs were used. A thirteenth century example of a stone roofed hall-house survives in a good state of preservation at Aydon Hall in Northumberland.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.The next phase was to jetty out the first 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, smoke hoods being introduced in the late 17th century.
A brick built fireplace, chimney breast, flue and chimney stack gave more efficient combustion. This allowed the whole of the hall to be floored, then the stack could contain an extra flue to provide a fire on the upper floor. Fireplaces and chimney stacks could be fitted into existing buildings against the passage, or against the side walls or even at the upper end of the hall. It was only at the end of the 18th century that this innovation reached the north.
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 cocklestove or the North American metal stove. In the earliest houses combustion of wood was helped by increasing the airflow by placing the logs on iron firedogs. In smaller houses the fire was used for cooking. Andirons provided a rack for spit roasting, and trivets for pots. Later an iron or stone fireback 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 firehoods directed the smoke away from the low underthatch to the apex of the roof. They were constructed in wicker which was then lime-plastered to render them fire-proof.
Inglenook fireplaces were a development. One side of the inglenook was a transverse wall, one of the others was the exterior wall which was pierced with a little 'fire window' that gave light. To the other side was a low partition wall with a settle to provide seating. A beam or bressumer at head height finished off the open end. The hearth stone extended across this whole area, and it was topped with a firehood. It became a room within a room. It was particular suited to burning logs and peat. In the Weald of Kent and Sussex, which were early iron smelting regions the back wall was protected by an iron fireback.
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 sea-cole. Sea-cole or coal as it is now called was quarried from outcrops around England and transported to London as early as 1253. In larger houses, fireplaces and chimneys were first used as supplementary heating in the parlour, before eventually suppressing the open hearth. In smaller hall houses, where heat efficiency and cooking were the prime concern, fireplaces became the principal source of heat earlier. The design of the coal grate was important and the open fire became more sophisticated and enclosed leading in later centuries to the coal burning kitchen range with its hob, oven and water boiler, and the Triplex type kitchen range with a back boiler and the 1922 AGA cooker.