Great hall in the context of "Guildhall, London"

Westminster Hall is a medieval great hall which forms part of the Palace of Westminster in London. It was built in 1097 for William II, and at that time was one of the largest halls in Europe. It is particularly notable for its hammerbeam roof, which was commissioned for Richard II in 1393 and built by the royal carpenter, Hugh Herland. At the same time the rest of the hall was remodelled by the master mason Henry Yevele. The hall survived the fire of 1834 and bombing in World War II and, in spite of various restorations, has maintained its medieval structure and many of its features.

The hall has served a variety of ceremonial and administrative functions throughout its history. From the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries it was home to the courts of King's Bench, Chancery, and Common Pleas. It was the scene of important state trials, including those of Thomas More,Guy Fawkes and King Charles I. Banquets and royal entertainments were hosted in the hall, with the last coronation banquet being that of George IV in 1821. Since the twentieth century, the hall has been the venue for the lyings in state of state funerals. It is used for special addresses by Parliament to the monarch, and is on rare occasions the venue for joint addresses to the two chambers of Parliament.

Bonython Hall is the "great hall" of the University of Adelaide, located in the university grounds and facing North Terrace, Adelaide. The building is on the now-defunct Register of the National Estate and the South Australian Heritage Register. It is primarily used for University graduation ceremonies, examinations, expositions and public lectures and meetings likely to draw large audiences.

In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages in northern Europe, a mead hall was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the Middle Ages, the great hall was the largest room in castles and large houses, and where the servants usually slept. As more complex house plans developed, the hall remained a large room for dancing and large feasts, often still with servants sleeping there. It was usually immediately inside the main door. In modern British houses, an entrance hall next to the front door remains an indispensable feature, even if it is essentially merely a corridor.

Today, the (entrance) hall of a house is the space next to the front door or vestibule leading to the rooms directly and/or indirectly. Where the hall inside the front door of a house is elongated, it may be called a passage, corridor (from Spanish corredor used in El Escorial and 100 years later in Castle Howard), or hallway.

A dais or daïs (/ˈdeɪ.əs/ or /ˈdeɪs/, US also /ˈdaɪ.əs/ but sometimes considered nonstandard) is a raised platform at the front of a room or hall, usually for one or more speakers or honored guests.

Historically, the dais was a part of the floor at the end of a medieval hall, raised a step above the rest of the room. On this, the master of the household or assembly (e.g. the lord of the manor) dined with his senior associates and friends at the high table, while the other guests occupied the lower area of the room. In medieval halls, there was generally a deeply recessed bay window at one or both ends of the dais, which provided retirement or greater privacy than the open hall. The dais area often had its own doorway for admission from the master's chambers, whereas most of the guests entered through a doorway leading into the main area of the hall.

The megaron (/ˈmɛɡəˌrɒn/; Ancient Greek: μέγαρον, [mégaron], pl.: megara /ˈmɛɡərə/) was the great hall in very early Mycenean and ancient Greek palace complexes. Architecturally, it was a rectangular hall that was supported by four columns, fronted by an open, two-columned portico, and had a central, open hearth that vented though an oculus in the roof.

The megaron also contained the throne-room of the wanax, or Mycenaean ruler, whose throne was located in the main room with the central hearth. Similar architecture is found in the Ancient Near East, though the presence of the open portico, generally supported by columns, is particular to the Aegean. Megara are sometimes referred to as "long-rooms", as defined by their rectangular (non-square) shape and the position of their entrances, which are always along the shorter wall so that the depth of the space is larger than the width. There were often many rooms around the central megaron, such as archive rooms, offices, oil-press rooms, workshops, potteries, shrines, corridors, armories, and storerooms for such goods as wine, oil, and wheat. Evidence suggests that the megara of ancient Greece were often created using the construction techniques of wattle-and-daub and pisé.

A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals with manorial tenants and great banquets. The term is today loosely (though erroneously) applied to various English country houses, mostly at the smaller end of the spectrum, sometimes dating from the Late Middle Ages, which currently or formerly house the landed gentry.

Manor houses were sometimes fortified, albeit not as fortified as castles, but this was often more for show than for defence. They existed in most European countries where feudalism was present.

The great chamber was the second most important room in a medieval or Tudor English castle, palace, mansion, or manor house after the great hall. Medieval great halls were the ceremonial centre of the household and were not private at all; the gentlemen attendants and the servants would come and go all the time. The great chamber was at the dais end of the hall, usually up a staircase. It was the first room which offered the lord of the household some privacy from his own staff, albeit not total privacy. In the Middle Ages the great chamber was an all-purpose reception and living room. The family might take some meals in it, though the great hall was the main eating room. In modest manor houses it sometimes also served as the main bedroom.

Evidence of chamber blocks separate to the hall can be seen as far back as the 10th century, for example in the excavated manor at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire. Upper chambers are also depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, such as in scene 3, where Harold Godwinson is feasting in his chamber at Bosham. After the Norman Conquest, plans of large houses became more integrated, and the great chamber assumed its standard place at the end of the hall. Some chamber blocks were built of stone and have survived, though the timber halls to which they were attached have vanished. This has led to confusion, with earlier historians like Margaret Wood seeing them as first floor halls. Examples include Burton Agnes Old Hall, Boothby Pagnell Manor, Hemingford Grey Manor and the School of Pythagoras in Cambridge. This development continued in the 13th century, though the halls became more frequently of stone, as at Old Soar Manor, of c.1280-90. Old Soar illustrates another development of the time, the addition of smaller rooms attached to the great chamber - in this case, a garderobe and a chapel. At this time, the standard plan of a manor had a single block attached to the hall, with the chamber above and the services below.