The efficient violence of time

Thursday, 3.--About noon I preached at Cathanger, about eight miles from Taunton. It was an exceedingly large house, built (as the inscription over the gate testifies) in the year 1555 by Sergeant Walsh, who had then eight thousand pounds a year; perhaps more than equal to twenty thousand now. But the once famous family is now forgotten; the estate is moldered almost into nothing, and three quarters of the magnificent buildings lie level with the dust. I preached in the great hall, like that of Lincoln College, to a very serious congregation. 

The Journal of John Wesley