Hall

In Mediæval domestic architecture, this was the principal apartment, and often the only public or state apartment even in costly and pretentious dwellings. It combined the uses which in modern houses are divided between the drawing room and the dining-room, being the scene at once of a emblies and of feasts. In castles, the hall was generally raised a story above the ground, the ground floor being devoted to the guard rooms and other subordinate apartments, and the basement to dungeons, the building thus divided being the keep. IMG:content-0475.png:[graphic] IMG:content-0476.png:[graphic] (q.v.) was erected 352 B.C. Important excavations were begun 1857 by Sir C. J. Newton, and described in his Discoveries , 1862.