This, believe it or not, is all that's left of the medieval kitchen of the guildhall. It's separate from the guildhall, so I should think that the food for the Guild Banquets was, at best, lukewarm by the time it reached the tables. All that's left is a massive open fireplace and flooring, and that's fast sinking into decay. The Guildhall itself, though is a glorious early building that is well looked after. More tomorrow, perhaps. Goodnight all.
3 comments:
I should think the hot food was carried across in hay-boxes to keep it hot for table.
Presumably quite a lot of slaughtery, gutting and plucking were done in or around the kitchen area - such pongy, noisy and messy work was kept well away from refined diners no doubt.
Hayboxes! Brilliant. Hadn't thought of that. We used haybox cookery a good deal in the last war (WWII that is), and very effective it was too, I'm told.
Hay has been used as an insulator for several millenia - when it was first used to insulate food I don't know but I think it was in fairly common practice by the late Saxon period.
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