A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages. It continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. At that time the word "great" simply meant big and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. In the medieval period, the room would simply have been referred to as the "hall" unless the building also had a secondary hall. The term "great hall" has been mainly used for surviving rooms of this type for several centuries to distinguish them from the different type of hall found in post-medieval houses. Great halls were found especially in France, England and Scotland, but similar rooms were also found in some other European countries.
A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. It was entered through a screens passage at one end, and had windows on the long sides, often including a large bay window. There was usually a minstrels' gallery above the screens passage. The screens passage was divided from the hall by a timber screen with two openings. The portion of the screen between these openings could be movable, such as the one at Rufford Old Hall. At the other end of the hall was the dais where the high table was situated. The ceiling above the dais was often ornamented to denote its higher status. The lord's family's more private rooms lay beyond the dais end of the hall, and the kitchen, buttery and pantry were on the opposite side of the screens passage. The dais end is generally referred to as the 'upper' end, and the screens end as the 'lower' end.