Heaven sent

Chris Lloyd reports.

IT seems a sin to step off the road and set foot on the pebbles of the church path. The stones scrunch loudly beneath the sole, shattering the Teesdale tranquility. It feels as if the noise will make birds fly in fear, cows stampede in terror and sheep flee in alarm.

They don’t. Nothing happens. The blanket of peace falls after each footstep, enveloping the low-slung church as it snuggles into the hillside.

Laithkirk Church is nowhere. No village surrounds it. No road signs point to it. And as no steeple or tower rises from it, it is easy to miss, especially as from the road all you see is a long, rough wall of the same local stone as the cow byre next door. There are no architectural pretensions to Laithkirk Church, which started life 600 or so years ago as a humble barn.

But step foot on the scrunchy path in the narrow gully beside it and you feel you are somewhere special.

The path leads to the churchyard, where you become aware of the countryside opening before you. Treetops disappear, while rounded hills rise in front of you. You also become aware of a noise covering your scrunching footsteps.

At first it is just a murmur, but as you walk it grows into a babble, and when you reach the low wall that guards the edge of the churchyard, it becomes an incessant chatter.

And at the low wall, you see it all. The River Lune, hundreds of feet down below, foaming creamy and brown as it flows over its stony bed.

The patterned dale rising up on the other side, its trees giving way to its walled green fields, which peter out as the eye reaches up to its purpley heather top. Those natural, graceful curves of the Lunedale landscape are in contrast to the jagged hillocks that previous generations of leadminers have left below the church. Nature has, though, reclaimed them, grassed them green, and a couple of dexterous sheep mountaineer over their summits.

“It really is one of the best views in Teesdale,”

says Ghita Harbour. “I think it is gorgeous, absolutely lovely.”

Ghita will sit in the church tomorrow when it takes part in this year’s Heritage Open Days.

It is a rare opportunity because outside the weekly service, the doors are locked.

The church started out as a tithe barn. In the distant days, when people had to hand over ten per cent of their produce to pay the clergy’s wages, this is where they dropped off their ecclesiastical tax. By 1432, the clergy had tired of everyone’s rotten old veg and expected to be paid in cash, so the barn was redundant.

Landowner Lord Fitzhugh allowed it to be converted into a chapel of ease.

Over time, windows were punched into the plain walls. A porch and a vestry were added, as was a bell – although no one now dares pull its rope. In 1844, it was even given its own parish covering the villages of Mickleton and Holwick and stretching from the River Tees at Middleton-in-Teesdale to the Cumbrian border.

Many of its now dwindling congregation have generations of connections to it. “My family have been coming here so long I wouldn’t like to say,” says churchwarden Margaret Walton, whose father was churchwarden for 43 years before her and whose uncle was a Second World War pilot killed over Germany and is remembered by a bench with a view.

“It’s like Amy in Mickleton,” says Ghita, who arrived from Wembley 11 years ago and never went back. “She’s 84, but she’s been coming here since before she was born because her mother was pregnant with her when she came.”

The landed gentry who have patronised the “church of the holy barn” go back further. In 1201, King John granted the Fitzhughs “free chase” in Lunedale – you are supposed to be able to see the stony ruins of their hunting lodge beneath the church. The Fitzhughs married into the Bowes, who married into the Lyons to make the Bowes-Lyons of Holwick.

One of the church’s proudest days was September 6, 1925, when Lady Elizabeth Bowes- Lyon brought her new husband, Prince Albert, the Duke of York, to a service.

The names of the kirk’s curates can be traced back to 1523. This year, the name of Stephen Adesanya was added to the list. A Nigerian who lived for many years in the Balkans, he is fluent in Croat, Serbian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, his native Yorub and his new-found English. “I can pray and speak and preach in six languages, although my Ukrainian and Russian are a bit disjointed,”

he says with a hearty smile that is always accompanied by an ecstatic handclap.

Asked how Laithkirk compares to his homeland, the reverend replies: “It is even very different compared with London; even within Teesdale it is very different.”

Sitting on the low wall in the September sun, the talkative Lune below and the barn church at our backs, we ask the obvious question.

Why have a church in nowhere? Of course, in times past there were agricultural and mining populations who have now vanished, but still there never has been a village, or even a hamlet, for it to serve.

“Perhaps it’s just that it is such a lovely high place to put a church,” suggest Ghita. “It can get vicious up here, but the countryside looks absolutely gorgeous even in rotten weather.

Every season is lovely. I feel really privileged that I have found my way here.”

She’s right. It is a church in a heavenly place.

■ Laithkirk Church is open to the public from noon to 5pm tomorrow. To find it, drive west out of Mickleton on the B6277. When you find the huge railway viaduct – built in 1868 – turn left under it and go up the hill to the church.

For full details of the buildings open this weekend, visit heritageopendays.org