On some of these plans the room which is usually called the parlour is marked "dy pler" or dining parlour. This shows that even the eating of meals, one of the functions for which the hall had always been used, was being transferred from that apartment to smaller and more comfortable rooms. The heads of the household, more particularly, sought the quiet of a smaller apartment, and with them they took their special friends, leaving persons of less importance to dine with the household in the hall. There is a letter from a Mr. Marlivale, of Chevington, written to Sir Thomas Kytson, of Hengrave, complaining of having been placed to dine in the hall with the steward instead of with the superior persons in the parlour. As Sir Thomas died in 1540, the practice of withdrawing from the great hall must have begun previous to that date. On one of Thorpe's plans he has marked a room as the "Servants' dining-room," which indicates a further desertion of the hall, and from the other end. The purposes for which the hall had been used being thus provided for elsewhere, it became no longer necessary to plan it on the old lines. The first change that took place was at the end where the screens were. The screens, indeed, disappeared, and in order to go from the front door to the kitchen department, the hall itself had to be traversed. The following examples show various instances of this change, but in the absence of particulars as to the name and date of most of the plans, it has been impossible to arrange them chronologically: what sequence there is, is a sequence of stages in the development of the new idea of using the hall as an entrance. The example in Fig. 220 has no name nor any writing upon it beyond the numbers of the stairs. The curious point about it is that the screen is in the side of the hall instead of at the end; otherwise it preserves most of the old arrangements. Although the rooms are not named, they are easy to identify. On the family side are the hall, with its daïs, the parlour, staircase, chapel and "lodgings." On the servants' side are the buttery, winter parlour, back stairs, kitchen and pastry. Owing to the altered arrangement of the screens there is no thoroughfare leading straight from the front door to the court beyond.