Looking for all the world like God's goalkeeper, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle was warmly welcomed into a jubilant team at Gainford.

THE church which Thomas Witham built, or at least had built and wholly paid for, marked its 150th anniversary quite splendidly on Sunday. Fr Michael Melia, steady away on two new hips, celebrated simultaneously the golden jubilee of his priesthood.

The Rt Rev Kevin Dunn, Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, had travelled south to St Osmund's in Gainford, eight priests concelebrated, a specially trained young team of altar servers choreographed as seamlessly as if on Strictly Come Dancing and CCTV relayed proceedings to the overflow in the parish centre next door.

"A particular welcome," said Bishop Kevin, "to the millions watching on television."

Viewers may particularly have noticed the number of times that the bishop removed and replaced a rather splendid mitre, as if at an episcopal milliner's. He had been told when to do it, he said afterwards, by someone called Jim.

"You go with the flow," said the sagacious Bishop Kevin, who'd brought for the great occasion the green vestment which his late uncle had intended to wear on his own priestly diamond jubilee.

The other priests all wore white, the bishop thus rather resembling a Leeds United goalkeeper, circa 1975.

Gainford is between Darlington and Barnard Castle, the Gothic-style church almost hidden from the main road down a long and elegant avenue.

Monsignor Witham, as later he became, had been born into a wealthy Catholic family, was ordained priest in 1829 but in the late 1840s inherited the family estates at Lartington, on the other side of Barney, when the last of his three brothers died.

"Squire" Witham's reasons for building the mission church at Gainford have been subject to speculation (shall we say) and are examined elsewhere. Suffice that he became resident priest for the first five years, said to entertain palatially but to live humbly and content with just butler, housekeeper, housemaid (and maybe one or two others).

"It may certainly be said," observed the Vicar of Barnard Castle after Witham's death in 1891, "that there is no-one who came within the sphere of his influence who was not the better for his Christian example and kindness of heart."

His influence may also have extended to Gainford vicarage, from where the parson's wife and daughter became Catholics in 1878.

Successors were no less memorable. Fr Vincent Duffy, parish priest from 1965-80, continued to say the Mass in Latin while his congregation intoned it in English and offered to pay for his own retirement party on condition that he didn't have to attend it.

The day was sunny, the service at noon. Children practised their party pieces amid the gravestones of former parish priests, sidesmen (or whatever is the Roman Catholic equivalent) anxious to squeeze as many as possible into each pew.

"You're a big feller, shove them up a bit," someone said and thus the column found itself next to a chap who didn't like Estelle White, who writes hymns.

Ms White has 17 of her compositions in Gainford's hymn book compared, say, to six by Charles Wesley. "Even John Gummer has had a go at her on television," said our neighbour.

We looked some of them up. One, Dreamcoat-like, began:

Moses I know you're the man;

You're going to work out my plan,

It was possible to suppose that John Gummer had a point.

The service was spontaneously joyous, better yet when the children in Victorian costume processed down the centre rustling yellow paper flags.

The bishop took his hat off to them; the rest of us simply applauded. The bairns sang something called "If I was a butterfly", which progresses through elephant, octopus, wriggly worm - which rhymed with squirm - and other assorted vertebrates but which isn't one of Ms White's. The choir coruscated.

Bishop Kevin spoke of St Osmund's "unique and splendid history", of its inauguration 150 years earlier by Bishop William Hogarth, and of his hope for the future.

"Even Bishop Hogarth had trouble finding priests for all his parishes and missions," he said.

The bishop also praised Fr Melia, priest previously at Esh and at Berwick. Officially retired, he remains enthusiastically active.

"A very humble and holy man," someone said. "A very pastoral priest, really relates to people," said another. "A great advert for the priesthood," said a third.

Afterwards there was a big do in a marquee, a conjuror for the kids, a chance to reminisce and to relax. The service had ended with the hymn "Faith of our fathers". Wherever they put the apostrophe, it seemed entirely appropriate.

THOMAS Witham was born at Cliffe Hall, near Piercebridge, became parish priest of Stella - near Blaydon - where he helped the building of both church and presbytery, but returned to Lartington as "squire" when he inherited the family estates.

So why did he build Gainford's lovely little church, and so richly endow it?

Both Christopher Towers' 1992 history of St Osmund's and Dr David Milburn's subsequent biography of Msgr Witham note the "story" that after inheriting Lartington, he applied to the Vatican to be laicised in order that he might marry and perpetuate the Witham line.

Rome was so unimpressed, supposes Towers, that they ordered him to build the church as a penance.

David Milburn recalls both that and a second once-popular theory, that the new squire's extravagant lifestyle so upset Rome that he was ordered to close off the drive across his park and to "build something".

Whatever the truth, Witham remained a generous benefactor not just to Gainford but to many other parishes in the Hexham and Middlesbrough dioceses and also helped finance the magnificent Pugin chapel at Ushaw College, where he trained.

In 1868, the Gainford parish cost £96 annually to run, with an income of £108 - £8 from parishioners, £100 from Witham. "Endowed with very considerable wealth, he wished to use it in the Lord's way only," says Towers. "It was his own personal contribution to the Catholic revival," says Milburn.

Milburn even went to the Vatican to research the legend that Witham applied to be freed from his priestly vows and found nothing - "not even whispers".

Msgr Witham died shortly before his 91st birthday. Fr Melia, among his successors at Gainford presbytery, is anxious to lay down a marker. "It is a calumny," he says. "Our most precious possession is our good name, which we have a right to possess beyond the grave."