The Great Hall

For centuries Strangers' Hall was the home of rich merchants and Mayors of Norwich. The building has gone through many changes, each new occupant making improvements and alterations.

This part of the house was rebuilt over the older undercroft by William Barley, a cloth merchant, in about 1450. In the 1530s Nicholas Sotherton, the wealthy merchant grocer and Mayor of Norwich, installed the crown-post roof and the stone-mullioned bay window. He also had the external stone steps and porch built to give direct access to the hall without passing through the cellars beneath. Sotherton’s merchant’s mark and coat of arms can be seen on the screen and on the carved roof timbers.

In Sotherton's time, most household activities would have centred on this room. This is where the family, their servants, friends and business customers met, dined, entertained and probably even slept. In Tudor times people lived a more communal life than today, and most rooms were used for a variety of purposes.

The hall’s layout followed the traditional late medieval pattern with the high table at the upper end, lit by the large bay window, and the service rooms at the lower end beyond the screen. Notice the two arched doorways of the buttery and pantry, traditionally used for storing liquid and solid foods respectively. Food was probably cooked in a separate kitchen outside to reduce the fire risk. There may never have been a fireplace in this hall, which was most likely heated by charcoal-burning braziers. Until the addition of the present wooden staircase in 1627, access to the upper rooms was by two narrow staircase turrets.

Most of the furniture displayed here is from the Tudor or early Stuart periods. The cupboard in the corner dates from the 1480s and was known as an aumbry or keep. It was originally used as a safe for valuables, but was later adapted for food storage by having ventilation slits cut in the doors. The hall cupboard on its left was used for storing and displaying plate such as the replica standing salt on top.

The framed painted cloth near the stone steps is know as the Buxton Achievement. It is probably late fifteenth century and shows the coats of arms of a Seneschal Buxton surrounded by figures of night and day, life and death and the ages of man. The tapestries once hung in Norwich Cathedral – it is unlikely that the merchant owners of Strangers’ Hall ever owned such large and costly pieces. They are Flemish, late fifteenth century, and tell the story of the Greek hero Bellerophon.

On the landing is a rare English table carpet, dated 1571. At this time carpets were hardly ever placed on the floor. The portraits are early seventeenth century and show members of the Buxton family.

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