[Illustration: 28. Kenilworth Castle. A Window of the Great Hall.] The hall itself was a noble apartment, admirably built in the best period of the Perpendicular style, lighted by large and lofty windows (Figs. 27, 28), and covered with an open timbered roof, which has long since disappeared. It must have been one of the finest halls of its time. At the upper or daïs end there is, on the east side, an octagonal bay window, with a fireplace in the south-west corner; while on the west is a tower, used on this floor as a buffet, and giving access by a passage to the range of rooms on the south front which were rooms of state and family apartments. About midway along their south front stood a large _garde-robe_ tower. The two towers which project from the west front and balance each other at either end of the hall are a foretaste of the symmetry which was, in later years, to play so important a part in the disposition of great houses. The general arrangement of the hall, with the kitchens at one end and the family rooms at the other, conforms to the usual type so frequently mentioned, which may also be seen very clearly at Haddon. The bay window at the daïs end is an early example of an arrangement which afterwards became universal. The hall fire was not placed on the floor in the middle of that apartment, but in two fireplaces, one in either side wall about half way between the screen and the daïs. The planning is, as usual, wasteful; the same accommodation might have been obtained with far less outlay and much more convenience, and a study of Elizabethan plans shows how far more surely and much more cheaply the designer of that day obtained his effects than did his predecessor of the fourteenth century. [Illustration: 29. Kenilworth Castle--View from the North-west. (The keep is on the left; the great hall on the right.)]