Bolton Abbey Hall

“Discover the private home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and their family in the Yorkshire Dales”, coos the website of Bolton Abbey Hall. I guess it is not all that private seeing as it has a website taking ‘enquiries’ from those wishing to hire it; the Yorkshire Post claims that the price was a whopping £25,000 per weekend four years ago. I am sure that it is a palace fit for a duke; King George V found it good enough when he was a frequent visitor, and it has been lived in since the fourteenth century by many folk who would have been considered upper class. It enjoys wonderful views of Bolton Priory’s ruins and the Wharfe Valley beyond. Still, £25,000 for three days!

The likes of me would want to own something for that kind of money, not merely borrow it for less than 72 hours. Had I the good fortune to stay there, I do not know whether I would be more preoccupied counting down the hours or the pounds (£5.79 per minute). All the pleasures and properties of this world are but borrowed, loaned by providence until such time as they pass to another, decay, or burn down. The invisible world of God’s good heaven, in contrast, is forever.

Spoke the Lord Jesus in Matthew 6:19-20:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

A. D