1) In Yorkshire inventories ‘hall’ continued to be the word for the main room in important houses well into the late 1600s, but during that same century a number of alternatives were also employed, including the ‘hall house’ and the ‘housestead’, words which are dealt with separately.
Evidence for the term house-body includes: 1623 one new table standing and beinge under the great wyndowe of the South syde of my howse bodye, Thornton
1648 In the house body: Item one Range ... a table a forme 2 buffett stooles, Sharlston
1668 Item goods in the house body one fire range 8s, Slaithwaite
1725 the house body and chamber over it, Meltham. It may be that this variety of terms is a reflection on the changing role of the ‘hall’ in the post-medieval period, as new house designs evolved. One or two more unusual references provide further evidence of the difficulty people appear to have had in finding a suitable term to replace ‘hall’. In 1677, for example, when Bankend in Thurstonland was partitioned, the list of rooms included all that house called the Hall or body of the house and in a Slaidburn inventory, in 1707, items of furniture were listed in the bodystead of the house.