Sizergh Castle

Sizergh Castle in Westmorland is one of those rather lovely country houses belonging to gentry rather than aristocracy, which in this case is the Strickland family. Perhaps for this very reason, much of the original fortified house survives. A wealthier, more fashionable family might have pulled down and rebuilt rather than made do with merely extending. Sizergh is the better for it.

Another sign of economy, but rather more contemporary, is the peculiar practice placing of modern electric heaters in the grand old fireplaces. While cleaner and more convenient (but possibly not cheaper to run), they look out of place. Nevertheless, there are reports that the late Queen would sit by a single-bar electric heater in Buckingham Palace rather than go to the trouble of heating the whole floor or having a fire lit. So they might look out of place at Sizergh, but they do not represent a departure from the standards of the very grandest woman of the grandest house of all.

We Christians feel increasingly out of place in secular/Islamic/New Age/woke Britain. We stick out and appear anachonistic. We are people of the world to come, not of this one, which fades away even as we breathe here. And if the world rejected the Lord Himself, why would it be any more embracing or tolerant of His children?

And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. Matthew 10:22

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