Great Stairs: Harewood House

One of the mains staircases at Harewood House, near Leeds, was deemed insufficiently grand by the producers of ITV’s Downton Abbey, even for those scenes set at that location. I understood they used the stairs at Wentworth Woodhouse, instead. Television producers presumably know what they are doing, and would not go to that trouble and expense for nothing. Yet by my standards, these are very grand stairs indeed, ones up which I am highly unlikely to ever ascend. Despite paying a whopping thirty pounds’ admission charge to the house last month, they were still out of bounds.

The grandest staircase of them all is not found in an English country house, nor some presidential mansion or royal palace. In the 28th chapter of Genesis, the patriarch Jacob beheld a stair or ladder connecting earth to heaven, up and down which travelled angelic beings:

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 28:12

Although its appearance, size and décor are not described, its regular users are far nobler than any on earth, while one end is connected to a place so magnificent, it is a fitting home for the Living God. By His good grace, any who desire His mercy may ascend it and enter His presence, for 2000 years ago, He came down it, to be born of the Virgin and die atop the cross, that we might share our eternity with Him.