CHAPTER THREE 



THE HALL 



The room we came into was indeed the house, for there was nothing but it 

 on the gound floor, but a stair in the corner went up to the chamber or loft 

 above. 



It was much like the room at the Rose, but bigger ; the cupboard better 

 wrought, and with more vessels on it, and handsomer. Also the walls, instead 

 of being panelled, were hung with a coarse loosely-woven stuff of green worsted, 

 with birds and trees woven into it. 



There were flowers in plenty stuck about the room, mostly of the yellow 

 blossoming flag or flower-de-luce, of which I had seen plenty in all the ditches, 

 but in the window near the door was a pot full of those same white poppies I 

 had seen when I first woke up ; and the table was all set forth with meat and 

 drink, a big salt-cellar of pewter in the middle, covered with a white cloth. 



" A Dream of John Ball." WILLIAM MORRIS. 



EFORE considering the hall in the modern house it is 

 necessary to return to the most primitive form of plan, when 

 the house itself was the hall and served for every function of 

 the domestic life. It was there the family cooked and ate 



their food. It was there they talked. And when night 



came it was on its rush-strewn floor that they slept. 



Gradually, however, as civilisation advanced, special cells were developed 

 from this unicellular type of plan, each adapted for its special function. And 

 so the original simple organism became complex, and, as each cell became 

 differentiated, the hall lost one by one its functions. There were parlours 

 for talking, bedrooms for sleeping, dining-room for eating, drawing-room 

 for withdrawing ; and thus the hall itself became a superfluous and 

 unnecessary adjunct its occupation gone. 



And so, like the tail of the crab, it began to dwindle, or, at most, it 

 persisted like the buttons on the back of a coat, as a useless part of the plan, 

 merely serving to connect the other portions of the house. 



And thus we find this atrophied form of the hall in the shape of the 

 narrow lobby with the staircase in it, which even in the smallest villa is still 

 dignified by the ancient title. In modern times the revolt against the sordid 

 ugliness of the Victorian house led those who aimed at re-creating beauty in 

 domestic surroundings to turn with an enthusiasm which was almost passion- 

 ate to the study of the earlier types of plan, where the hall played such 

 an important part. And so, amidst other features and details of the past, 

 the hall became again a somewhat notable feature in the plan, and was 

 considered almost an essential adjunct to the artistic house. 



In the large house, where economic conditions of planning may give way 

 to the fancy of the individual, this revival of the hall may perhaps be 

 justified, and a sitting-room may well be sacrificed for the sake of a fine focus 

 to the plan; but in the smaller houses, where every inch of space must 

 be made the most of, such a hall was a somewhat expensive luxury, though, 

 inasmuch as it is the mark of the modern mind to be incapable of conceiving 

 c i? 



