Fulham Palace

I called at Fulham Palace on my recent visit to the capital. This was the principal seat of the Bishops of London from Saxon times to 1973. Today, the buildings are Tudor and Georgian with a Victorian Chapel. The gardens are rather pleasant, and the museum inside is interesting, even if its curators felt the need to dedicate an entire room to the legacy of slavery, which I suspect was a panicky and hastily assembled response to the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020.  

The Great Hall was once the centre of palace life, and would have been well known to the various episcopal custodians of this fascinating site. It was here that the bishops transacted much of their business and entertained their guests, from the very worst of them, Edmund Bonner, who burnt Protestants, to the very best of them, Nicholas Ridley, who died in those flames, and, of course, the many others inbetween.

Several modern portraits depict the various prelates of London who called this great house their home, from Waldhere who died around 705 to Robert Stopford whose successor surrendered the palace to the Fulham corporation and moved to more economical accommodation. For successive generations, therefore, this was a place where bright, evangelical light issued forth, as well as a place from where papal darkness and liberalistic dullness was spread.

May all our homes, and not just the palaces of the rich and powerful, be places from where Christ's light shines forth. A real measure of our testimony to the truth will be whether our spouses and families can detect it on a Tuesday morning or Friday night, not just on a Sunday morning. Our time on earth is brief: let us share light and truth while we have it to spare.