WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD.
SCREEN IN THE HALL (1610-13).
CHAPTER VIII.
INTERIOR FEATURES (continued).
Treatment of the Hall, Screens, Open Roofs.
145.—The Hall, Knole, Kent.
On entering the hall after leaving the courtyard, it was on such panelling as this that the eye rested. The screen which divided the hall from the passage was generally even more richly decorated than the adjacent panelling. Its two doorways were flanked with columns, which carried a complete entablature from side to side of the hall; above this came the panelled front of the gallery, which was surmounted in its turn perhaps by a series of small arches, perhaps by some of the fantastic strap-work peculiar to the time. The spaces between the columns were panelled; every panel here and above was decorated with carving—usually of shields of arms, but where these were not suitable, as in halls of colleges, then with foliage or allegorical figures. Knole House, in Kent, has a good example of a screen with heraldic decoration (Fig. [145]). Wadham College, Oxford (Plate [XLIV].), has one of comparatively simple character; while for sumptuous effect those at Middle Temple Hall, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge (Plate [XLV].), could hardly be surpassed. Woollas Hall, in Worcestershire, has a good screen of simple character. The illustration on Plate [XLVI]. gives a view of it looking from the hall. The archway leads into the passage called the "screens," in which can be seen the open door of the principal entrance. The gallery has a balustraded front; it is carried out over the entrance porch, and is lighted by a small window, visible in Fig. [69], just below the oriel. The hall, having a room over it, has a flat ceiling, and not an open timber roof. The windows of the hall were usually rather high up, and the walls were panelled up to the sills, but as a rule the sill of the bay window at the daïs end was brought down low enough to afford an outlook. Above the panelling the walls were largely occupied by the windows, the spaces between which were hung with "pikes, guns, and bows, with old swords and bucklers that had borne many shrewd blows": or they were filled with pictures, of which a considerable number, chiefly portraits, began to be found in large houses. From the top of the windows sprang the roof, the feet of its principals coming down and occupying part of wall space between them. The principals were still constructed in the old hammer-beam manner, even at so late a date as 1604 for Trinity College, Cambridge, and 1612 for Wadham, but all the ornament is of a late type, and gives a very rich effect, the light glancing upwards against the many surfaces of the pendants and the strong lines of the moulded braces. The roof at Middle Temple Hall, built in 1570, is almost as elaborate and fine as that of the Great Hall at Hampton Court, built some forty years before, but the detail is later in character. The roof of the hall at Wollaton is peculiar in that it is of the hammer-beam type, although supporting the flat floor of a room over it (Fig. [146]). Usually, when there was a room over the hall the ceiling was treated with ornamental rib-work, in the same manner as the other and less lofty rooms: the hall at Knole presents an example of this kind of treatment (Fig. [145]). At Kirby there is an unusual form of roof, neither flat nor open timbered, but a kind of barrel-vault formed of four straight faces (Fig. [147]); each face is divided into large panels by moulded and cut oak ribs of large size, and each panel has a curved diagonal rib resembling the wind-braces of a Gothic roof. The panels are filled with boarding at the back of the ribs.
