To the left of the passage four arched doorways conduct respectively to the buttery, the great kitchen, and other domestic offices, and to a staircase leading to the long suite of chambers on the north side, and also communicating, by means of a gallery in the Banqueting-Hall, with all the other apartments of the building. To the right is a massive and time-worn oak screen, with two open doorways, which divides the Banqueting-Hall from the passage. Entering by the first of these openings in the screen, the visitor will not fail to notice a suspicious-looking little iron bracket with ring attached, high above his head. This, tradition says, was an instrument of punishment for enforcing the observance of laws of conviviality. For it is said, if, in the days of feasting and merriment in the “good old times,” a man should fail to drink up his quota of liquor, he was fastened up by the wrist to this ring, and the liquor poured down his sleeve so as gradually to trickle down him on to the floor; or, if guilty of any other breach of the law or decorum of the board, he was similarly tied up, and compelled so to remain during the carousal, and was treated now and then not only with a stream of cold water poured down his sleeve, but by other indignities forced upon him.
The Banqueting-Hall: with the Minstrels’ Gallery.
The Banqueting-Hall, or Great Hall, as it is sometimes called, measures, within the screen, about 35 feet in length, and about 25 in width, and it is of the full height of the building, with an open timber roof. It is entered, as has just been stated, by two open doorways in the screen which separates it from the passage. The screen also forms the front of the Minstrels’ Gallery over the passage. The screen is beautifully panelled, each panel being headed with cinquefoil cusps, above which is other Gothic tracery of elegant design. At the opposite end from this screen is the raised daïs for the lord and his family and honoured guests, where still stands the grand old table on which so many of the good things of this life have been spread in ages long since passed away.
Old Oak Table in the Banqueting Hall.
This table is one of the finest examples of its kind yet remaining anywhere in existence—it is now worm-eaten and decayed, like those who once feasted around it; but still it stands, a proud monument of those ancient times so long gone by. Over the daïs a modern window has been inserted, and formerly a doorway, to the left of the lord as he sat in the centre of the large table, opened into what is now the dining-room, but in those days was the withdrawing-room.
The Hand-lock in the Banqueting-Hall.