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Tudor Halls
Tudor Living Areas
Most of indoor Tudor life took place in the hall. Activities centred around cooking and eating.
Chairs
Chairs were still fairly rare. They did not become standard items of furniture until the seventeenth century. Before then, their use was reserved for kings and the wealthy owners of fine houses and palaces. In early Tudor years, if a household was lucky enough to own a chair, it would be reserved for the home owner when sitting down to eat his meals in the hall. His guests and family members would sit on stools, possibly a cushion to make them comfortable.
If your Tudor dolls house is lucky enough to have a chair, it should be on display in the main room or hall. The following designs are all appropriate:-
- Settle or Wainscot or Box chair – tall backs and arms. The seat is a box with a front or back opening and a hinged lid to enable its owner to store items inside it. Place your settle chair against the wall. It would have been extremely heavy and therefore unlikely to have been moved around
- Caquetoire or Caqueteuse Chair – Caquetoire means conversation. These chairs were lighter and more mobile than the wainscot chairs above and had no panels or storage. A Caquetoire chair has a tall noarrow backrest and wide arms
Chests
Chests were used for dry storage, seating and table surfaces and so could be found in the hall or the bedroom
Look out for the following when choosing a Tudor chest for your dolls house:-
- Oak –boards or planks for early tudor, joined chests for the latter half of the era. Panel chests maintained their popularity as they were light and their looser construction allowed for warping and movement of the woods.
- Fifteenth century style chests – produced between the thirteenth and eightenth centuries and typically made our of oak, holly or other local wood. Six planks would be nailed together to form boxes and raised from the floor with end boards, to keep their contents dry
- Six board chests – were held together with iron bands or with leather straps. The lids were fastened together with wire staples linked together to form hinges
- Joined chests – as joinery became more advanced, chests were held together with a mortise and tenon joints, connecting chamfered panels that slotted into grooves. Oak pins, not nails joined the morise and tenon. These chests were often decorated with roundels or geometric patterns carved into the oak. By 1500 linenfold patterning was used, along with Renaissance motifs and bright painted colours.
Tables
Tables were really for the most wealthy and would be found in the main room of the house, the hall or dining hall They did not develop a great deal from their medieval predecessors. The master of the house and his direct family members would sit at a rasied dais with the dining table in front of them.
The following table types were very typical:-
- Trestle table – stemming back to medieval dining halls. Trestle tables were made up of long boards or planks resting on uprights, also known as trestles. Two trestles were needed for each table and these were held in place with oak pegs. The tables could be easily pulled apart for cleaning and stacking
- Tudor table – usually oak and smaller. They were rectangular in shape, built inside a framework. Carved or turned legs at each corner were connected by “stretchers” at the ground.
Click here to learn more about shops in your local area selling Tudor houses and accessories
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