His Lips Closer To My Ears

Or big manor house or hall house, and it was still erected in country houses in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but the family used it for eating and relaxing. 

The word 'great' merely meant 'large' and did not have the overtones of quality that it does now. Unless the structure featured a subsidiary hall, the room would have been referred to simply as the "hall," but the phrase "great hall" has been used to differentiate surviving rooms of this sort for several centuries to separate them from the distinct form of hall seen in post-medieval dwellings. 

Great halls were particularly common in France, England, and Scotland, but similar spaces may also be found in other European countries. A typical great hall was a rectangular space that was one and a half to three times as long as it was wide, as well as higher.