Separation of common & private rooms
The internal layout of the House for Distinguished
Guests (fig. 398) is historically of particular interest, as it
shows that at the beginning of the ninth century the timbered
royal hall was sufficiently partitioned internally to
allow the lord to withdraw from the ranks of his followers
to the privacy of separate bedrooms. Dining was still a
communal function. But the establishment of individual
fireplaces with chimneys in the lord's private chambers
made the latter independent from the open fire in the floor
of the hall. Architecturally speaking, this means that the
private bedrooms under the lean-to's at each end of the
hall could have been screened off from the rest of the
building, not only by vertical wall partitions (as they most
certainly were), but also by their own individual ceilings.
If ceilings were installed, the walls required windows,
since ceilings would have deprived the bedrooms of the
principal source of light for the house—the louver over the
fireplace in the ridge of the roof of the hall. The quarters
of the servants, on the other hand, cannot have been provided
with ceilings, since they depended for warmth on the
heat furnished by the communal fire in the center hall.
