The BANQUETING-HALL, or GREAT HALL, as it is sometimes called, measures, within the screen, about 35 feet in length, and about 25 in width, and it is of the full height of the building, with an open timber roof. It is entered, as has just been stated, by two open doorways in the screen which separates it from the passage. The screen also forms the front of the MINSTRELS’ GALLERY over the passage. The screen is beautifully panelled, each panel being headed with cinquefoil cusps, above which is other Gothic tracery of elegant design. At the opposite end from this screen is the raised daïs for the lord and his family and honoured guests, where still stands the grand old table on which so many of the good things of this life have been spread in ages long since passed away. [Illustration: _Old Oak Table in the Banqueting Hall._] This table is one of the finest examples of its kind yet remaining anywhere in existence—it is now worm-eaten and decayed, like those who once feasted around it; but still it stands, a proud monument of those ancient times so long gone by. Over the daïs a modern window has been inserted, and formerly a doorway, to the left of the lord as he sat in the centre of the large table, opened into what is now the dining-room, but in those days was the withdrawing-room. [Illustration: _The Hand-lock in the Banqueting-Hall._] To the right hand, on entering, is the gigantic fire-place with its huge open chimney; and on the opposite side, at the end next the high table, a flight of steps leads up to the state apartments; and close by, through a corner partitioned off by the oak wainscoting, another door leads to the private dining-room and to the grounds. On the walls of the Banqueting-Hall are some magnificent stags’ heads and antlers, which bear evidence not only of extremely fine growth, but of great age, since they fell to the lord of the chase. There are also several pieces of old furniture: and on the walls are oil-paintings of Martin Middleton of Hazelbadge, and of an old and favourite huntsman and gamekeeper—honoured and respected retainers of the family. [Illustration: _Staircase to Minstrels’ Gallery._] The galleried passage, of a later date, to the Minstrels’ Gallery, occupies one side, and the “Minstrels’ Gallery” itself one end, of the Banqueting-Hall—that portion of the gallery along the side forming a passage from the drawing-room and state apartments on one side to the range of rooms on the other. The portion of the gallery over the end of the hall is considerably wider than the other, and would hold a goodly company of minstrels, or of guests, to look down on the “lord of misrule” and other revels below. In one of our engravings we show the panelled front of the Minstrels’ Gallery, and on the preceding page we give a vignette of the entrance to the gallery from the drawing room.