A buttery was originally a large cellar room under a monastery, in which food and drink were stored for the provisioning of strangers and passing guests. Nathan Bailey's An Universal Etymological Engl
Rochlitz Castle, Germany, basement wine cellar, perhaps providing an idea of the mediaeval buttery
Wine bins in the undercroft of Norton Priory, near Runcorn, Cheshire, an example of a wine storage area in a historic domestic setting
The classic layout of an important mediaeval house, showing three doorways to service rooms, Old Rectory, Warton. These doorways are here seen from inside the Great Hall, but would originally have been hidden by the wooden screen of the screens passage. The central doorway leads into a passage to an outside kitchen. The other two doors are to the pantry and buttery
The buttery is typically located close to a dining hall as in this example from Haddon Hall, Derbyshire; ground plan from 1886
A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages. It continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, al
The Great Hall in Barley Hall, York, restored in the late 1980s to replicate its appearance in around 1483
Great Hall at Stokesay Castle
Plan of Horham Hall, including a screens passage, leading from the entrance porch; a dais; a bay window. The main staircase is at the dais end, and the hall was the full height of the two-storey house
The Great Hall at Stirling Castle built for James IV. The larger windows lit the high table