Haddon Hall, Haddon Heaven

Haddon Hall in Derbyshire has to be one of the best stately homes in the realm, and for that accolade there is much competition. As well as being a fine medieval manor house with some tasteful, later additions, the Victorian and Georgian modernisers apparently considered it off-limits. It is situated on a hill overlooking a river valley, with hills in every direction. Not only would this have kept safe some of its earlier inhabitants, but its beauty would have doubtless given them much pleasure. It was a sunny, mid-April morn on which I called, and the gardens and neighbouring countryside delightfully complimented the ancient mansion.

Although it was not cheap to enter at £26 per head, the ticket sale must greatly assist Lord Edward Manners and his family with the upkeep of their home. This is the second Manners property I have helped to subsidise this decade; I visited Belvoir Castle back in 2020, whereat the Duke of Rutland, Lord Edward’s elder brother, lives. Much as I love Haddon, however, I doubt I should like to live there. It would take all day to vacuum the place and the Gas Board would rub its hands with glee at the prospect of trying to heat it. So I wish Lord Edward and his kinsmen well, but I was pleased to return to my modest terrace in Lancashire.

In the 14th of John, the New King James Version renders the Lord Jesus’ words thus:

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” (vv1-4).

The word mansion is a translation of the Greek word μοναὶ or monai, which the AV also uses. The NIV uses ‘rooms’, while other translations opt for ‘dwellings’, and at least one ‘lodging’. Abode is possibly the best literal translation, but the context would indicate something rather grander and more desirable than the kind of cottage most of His hearers would have called home; in other words, a mansion. Some North American charlatans who claim to visit heaven in the course of their ministries have proclaimed that we each get a gigantic house when we arrive there, complete with endless supplies of food and talking trees, but these accounts we can safely discount, and their proponents we may dismiss. Whatever the living accommodation in heaven, we may be certain that:

There is room for all who believe;

It will be more comfortable and commodious than where we now dwell (and in the unlikely event that a reader of this blog is wealthy and dwells in a palace, I speak of you, too);

Its prospect should reduce our current sorrows, considering how temporal they are;

It will be considerably cheaper to enter than Haddon Hall, though a hundred times more lovely (Christ freely admits to His heaven all who come to Him in repentance and faith);

If you want a picture of the mansions within the Father’s great house, drive two hours south to Haddon Hall. If you wish to save the entrance charge, just read Revelation 21.

But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Rev 21:22-27, NKJV