Constructed over a ten year period and finally completed in 1573, Middle Temple Hall is the focal point of Middle Temple, one of the oldest Inns of Court and is used by the members of the Inn for dining and entertaining. With its double hammer beam roof and wood paneling it has remained unchanged for four hundred years.

Many famous Elizabethans, including Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher and John Hawkins, were members and frequent visitors. Festival times were a particular excuse for lavish entertainment and, during the Christmas celebrations in 1602, London's leading band of players, the Chamberlain's Men, gave the first recorded performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in Middle Temple Hall
.       
Inside the Hall is the Bench Table, twenty-nine feet long and made of continuous planks taken from a single oak felled in Windsor Great Park and believed to have been a gift from Queen Elizabeth I, whose portrait hangs on the wall behind. The table was put in place before the Chancellor’s Window in the alcove to the left of it could be glazed.   Two other treasures include a rectangular table with legs that seem to have been added as an afterthought. The oak that forms the table top was given to the Inn by Sir Francis Drake and started life as a hatch cover on The Pelican, later known as The Golden Hind.    

At a distance, the Chancellor’s Window looks like a rather elaborate piece of stained glass.  Close up, though, each frame contains a different coat of arms.  Mostly Elizabethan, these are the arms of former lord chancellors, judges and ordinary members of Middle Temple.

Middle Temple Hall is one of London's great survivors - the Great Fire of 1666 miraculously left it unscathed after the wind changed course and wartime bombing destroyed only a fraction of the Eastern end. 

Click here to see Map to Middle Temple Hall