An oasis in the desert

THREE days ago at the Church of England's General Synod, Anne Williams chaired the crucial debate on the theological implications of women bishops, managed to call almost 40 speakers from every end of the argument and was much praised for her leadership.

This afternoon, home just in time, she'll be at the parish room tea and bingo session on the semi-abandoned Ford estate in Sunderland. It raises around £28 a time; they say she leads that very well, an' all.

"I can only say that I love it here," she says. "For the first time in my life I feel that I am in exactly the right place."

Born in Shotton Colliery, raised a couple of miles coastward at Horden, she left A J Dawson Grammar School in Wingate with four O levels - "Girls weren't encouraged to further education in those days, just to marry and have children."

Now she is a vice-chairman of General Synod, vice-chairman of Forward in Faith - a national umbrella group of bodies intractably opposed to the ordination of women - and since July last year, has been a Church Army sister attached as "community missioner" to the Church of the Good Shepherd on Ford, a building perceptively said by one of the faithful to be lovely once you get inside.

Commissioned at 58, she was the oldest trainee in the Church Army's 122-year history.

Ford is a pre-war estate south of the river, each street beginning with the letter F - as in Forgotten, Forlorn or Failing.

Many houses are already steel shuttered and deserted, others burned out and roofless, not what you might call Ford popular. Even the manhole cover at Anne's house next to the church is locked down with an iron bar in an attempt to deter its misappropriation.

It's the front line, maybe even the deep end, yet those who might suppose that it's no place for a diminutive single woman barely a year off the old folks' pension can never have met Sister Anne.

"I love them to bits, they're a great group of people and not just those in the congregation," says the former assistant bursar at Durham High School for Girls, now uniformed but by no means uniform.

"There's a little bit of misunderstanding, but it's nothing. They just wonder about what kind of an animal lives in that house."

Even the kids who hang around the night time corners in groups of 30 or 40 have failed to deter her. "They're just chilling out," she says, but only about half as many chill out at last Sunday's service.

Though no other casts a clout, George Bell has walked in his Sunday suit the two or three miles from Chester Road, hangs his jacket on the chair in front, sings hymns in rolled up shirt sleeves and wonders if I'm the chap who writes the walks column.

"It's the best thing in the paper," he insists.

The 9.15 Mass, aromatic Anglo-Catholic, is led by retired priest Fr Myles Bebbington, vested in the deep penitential purple of Lent. Sister Anne's alongside him in grey cassock, scapula and tippet - a sort of muff - with Church Army insignia.

Without even being asked to do so, she declines afterwards to be photographed behind the altar. It is not, she believes, a woman's place. A card in her purse asks that in the event of emergency they call a male priest.

The hymns are accompanied by a tape recorder, Anne's sermon confronts Satan - as in get thee behind me - the intercessor invites prayers for those in the Church who devalue the gospel.

Anne asks for prayers for the Synod, and particularly for her role that Wednesday morning. "I shall return refreshed," she says, "and if not refreshed, I shall return."

The weekly newsletter promises an "astounding" announcement, which is that the small congregation raised over £3,000 last year.

May Makim has attended the Good Shepherd since a Church Army tent stood on the site, helped her mother wash the altar linen and watched her father fettle the boiler.

"Sister Anne's great, marvellous," she says. "She's taken such a load off our minds these past few months."

Nancy Hardy talks of the church's dour exterior, says a book should never be judged by its cover. "It's a little oasis in the desert, a beautiful place."

A bit rough round about? "No rougher than anywhere else," says Nancy.

Iris Thompson says the folk over the road watch out for Sister Anne whenever she goes out. "The people who come to church really love and respect her. The difference she's made is amazing."

"It's about giving the people in the pews the confidence to go out and evangelise," says Sister Anne.

Since the church hall has also been destroyed by arsonists, Anne re-arranges the church furniture for a children's club - "not really a Sunday School, just something for the bairns to do" - before hurrying off to prepare for the trip to South, synod and impending sex equality.

Back in Sunderland she's been given a second hand snooker table, hopes soon to start a youth club both for locals and for young offenders. They'll have to open up the church, she says, because the estate has no other community facilities.

"If you put your hand in the hand of God, I believe you should hold onto your hat, because sometimes God moves pretty fast."

She'll be back, lucky for some, for the bingo. Truly, Ford in faith.

LAST week's column on Etherley parish church and on the Rev Peter Holland prompts a note from the Rev Harry Lee in Consett - among Peter's contemporaries at Stockton Grammar School in the 1950s.

Another three Stockton boys from those days - Les Welsh, formerly Vicar of Wolsingham, David Jones, recently retired from Staindrop, and the renowned arts chaplain Canon Bill Hall - all became Church of England priests.

"The list is remarkable because, despite the school's church connection, the atmosphere wasn't particularly religious," says Harry. They were much encouraged, however, by Tom McManners - a "charismatic" history master whose father, Canon Joseph McManners, was Vicar of Ferryhill.

"By my reckoning," adds Harry, "the McManners family are one of the great families of County Durham."

Another gentle note from Canon David Hinge, himself a former Rector of Etherley, points out that it wasn't Queen Victoria but Queen Adelaide who bought 33 copies of the first rector's collected sermons. "It was 1832, a little early for Victoria."

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