The central picture in Old English life—the great event of the day—was Noon-meat, or dinner in the great hall. A little before three, the chief and all his household, with any stray guests who might have dropped in, met in the hall, which stood in the centre of its encircling bowers—the principal apartment of every Old English house. Clouds of wood smoke, rolling up from a fire which blazed in the middle of the floor, blackened the carved rafters of the arched roof before they found their way out of the hole above which did duty as a chimney.
Tapestries, dyed purple, or glowing with variegated pictures of saints and heroes, hung, and if the day was stormy, flapped upon the chinky walls. In palaces and in earls' mansions coloured tiles, wrought into a mosaic, formed a clean and pretty pavement; but the common flooring of the time was clay, baked dry with the heat of winter evenings and summer noons. The only articles of furniture always in the hall were wooden benches; some of which, especially the high settle or seat of the chieftain, boasted cushions, or at least a rug.

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