What did Europe’s Dark Ages-era kings and lords live in? In the Castle series, I make the case that castles—fortified residences—were quintessentially Norman innovations for governing the rebellious newly-conquered English land. There seem to be two kinds of royal houses in the centuries before castles. The first model is the Hall, and the second is Charlemagne’s Palace at Aachen.
The Anglo-Saxon kings in Kent, Wessex and Norfolk seem to have lived in halls similar to the one described in Beowulf. This seems also to have been the model for the royal homes in Sweden and Denmark. The king, whether a petty king or an overlord to other kings, lived surrounded by his loyal retainers. His greatest personal need for a house was to put on large feasts. His wall against danger was the human wall of loyalty, and loyalty-bonding ceremonies took place at feasts.
So the basic “hall” model was the largest single-room structure they were able to build out of timber. They were big rectangles, sometimes bowed-out like ships’ sides. Some builders may have used curved-timber ship principles to hold up the roof. Evidence of this comes in the form of postholes and trenches for halls, which are visible as soil-hardness patterns in aerial surveys. What did they look like on the outside? We have only artists’ reconstructions, with lots of contention.
We know a little about the hall from stories like Beowulf: it had fire pits in the center, with smoke drifting up through the high ceiling and out through holes. At one end, there was a partition with the ruler’s private chamber behind it. Servants would have slept in the hall itself, and cooking was done in outbuildings due to the risk of fire. The main furniture of the hall consisted of tables and benches, since its whole purpose was to put on feasts. The benches and tables could also be used as beds; in Beowulf, they seem to get pillows and blankets out of chests and convert the main hall itself into a dormitory.
The other model is Charlemagne’s Palace in Aachen. The previous kings apparently moved from house to house around their territory, but Charlemagne wanted to do less traveling and have a stable capital. The only surviving building is its chapel, called the Palatine Chapel.
The palace seems to have been a series of large houses connected by covered galleries, so that during winter the family and servants could easily go from one end to the other. There was a large Council Hall that probably functioned the way the northern halls did: big gatherings and feasts. It was built of timber and brick, and probably the other buildings were, too.
Most notable were the inclusion of Roman baths, because Aachen has hot springs. The “thermae” complex covered many acres and included a very large swimming pool. Charlemagne himself was very fond of swimming and encouraged his children and lords to come in the pool.
The palace at Aachen had a wall around it, generally, but it was not fortified as such. Charlemagne, like other Germanic kings, lived surrounded by loyal retainers who constituted his real protection.