Castle Peephole Significance: In the earliest castles, the family slept at the extreme upper end of the hall, beyond the dais, from which the sleeping quarters were separated by only a curtain or screen. Fitz Osbern’s hall at Chepstow, however, substituted for this temporary division a permanent wooden partition.
Sometimes castles with ground-floor halls had their great chamber, where the lord and lady slept, in a separate wing at the dais end of the hall, over a storeroom, matched at the other end, over the buttery and pantry, by a chamber for the eldest son and his family, for guests, or for the castle steward.
These second-floor chambers were sometimes equipped with “squints,” peepholes concealed in wall decorations by which the owner or steward could keep an eye on what went on below.