Middle Temple Hall is one of the country’s finest examples of an Elizabethan Hall. It was built between 1562 and about 1573, although it was probably in use from about 1570, the date which appears in the Elizabethan stained glass windows. Elizabeth I is reputed to have |
dined here on several occasions, though no written account survives. Certainly the Inn was Crown property when the Hall was built by the Middle Temple, and the Hall itself is referred to as “the quene’s highnes howse” in a letter by Edmund Plowden to Sir John Thynne, ancestor of the Marquess of Bath, which survives in the Archive at Longleat. In it Plowden asks to borrow Mr Lewis, Thynne’s head carpenter at Longleat, to carry out what he describes as the Queen’s work.
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