As I discussed in the previous chapter, the chamber was understood by late medieval English society to be a space in which honest advice and counsel could be sought and which promoted communication between couples or between the main occupant of the chamber and those who worked in the space. This sense of trust and intimacy came from the physical or, in the case of some council chambers and administrative bodies, perceived presence of the bed. This assumption is due to the idea that people shed their outer trappings as they go to bed, and so were more truly themselves in the chamber than anywhere else. Associations with intimacy made the chamber a suitable space for serious discussion, but also for fun and relaxation. In this chapter I focus on the cultural understanding of the chamber as an intimate space for communal and solitary leisure.

Merry and jocund in the chamber

Dame Studie's lament in Piers Plowman is a testament to the fact that the chamber was used increasingly in the later Middle Ages as a space for social activities with a select group of people, away from the hall and its associated social conventions. Not only does this passage indicate that high-status people preferred to eat in the chamber, but it also implies that the hall itself was ‘elenge’ (desolate and sad) every day of the week through lack of use. The reference to the hall as the space for ‘men to eten inne’, as opposed to the space designated for the lord and lady, reflects the growing number of chambers built in late medieval England and the social segregation which ensued.