QUEEN Victoria loved a good sermon; it probably kept her amused. When the first Rector of Etherley produced a whole, wholesome book of them, Her Majesty bought 33 copies. She should have heard Peter Holland.

We knew Peter when he was Vicar of Tudhoe, near Spennymoor, in the 1970s, kept contact when he moved eastwards to Seaham Harbour - there to dig deep with the striking miners - lost it when in 1989, he moved south to Bedfordshire, and the diocese of St Albans.

Peter has a thing about what generally he calls "posh" folk. Some thought he was a northern barbarian, he says, others (perhaps worse) a Scargillite. He seemed, on any argument, a pretty strange Beds fellow.

Now he's back in his native County Durham, retired to the west Durham village of Woodland, puts in many a shift, nonetheless.

Last Sunday he too was at Etherley, about 20 of the parish's 2,500 population up to join him for the 8am "Said Eucharist with sermon". Oh, definitely with sermon.

Though the church (like all others) faces east, no dawning sun rises above the altar. Though the weather forecast is wet and cold, it's wet, cold and miserable.

"In my declining years, which are a mixture of Last of the Summer Wine and One Foot in the Grave..." the sermon begins. Peter will brighten things up.

Etherley, indivisible from Toft Hill, is three miles west of Bishop Auckland. Strictly there's High Etherley and Low Etherley, St Cuthbert's church - built in 1832 when the pits prospered and the nearby Stockton and Darlington Railway rapidly raised steam - sits, like its churchmanship, somewhere in the middle.

The late Peter Kilmister's gloriously sardonic church history recalls not only that the land was given for five shillings by Sir Robert Eden, not only that the Queen smiled (as best she could) upon the labours of the Rev George Watson but that Joe Piker, a twice married Toft Hill miner and farmer, was found on his death in 1869 to be a woman.

(Peter Kilmister taught us A-level English at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. He could be pretty sardonic then, an' all.)

Peter - for some reason the kids called him Percy - also recounts the days when there was not only a rector but a curate, when at the time of the centenary, the Sunday school had 125 scholars and 13 teachers, the young adults' Bible class had 33 members, the Mothers' Union 70, and ten people distributed the parish magazine.

Etherley's last Rector left in 1996, after which they shared a priest with the churches at Escomb and Witton Park. When the Rev Nick Denham is instituted to those three next month, he will take charge of Hamsterley and Witton-le-Wear as well.

"We've had a number of years to get used to and it did take a bit of getting used to," says Roy Wilson, the welcoming churchwarden.

"The days of having one priest in each parish have gone. It's the people who run the church now, not the vicar."

Roy helps run it so diligently that his wife reckons he's never away. "Who else would do it?" he asks.

Services, in the meantime, fall to the willing, wandering care of the likes of 68-year-old Peter Holland, white haired but no less invigorating.

Like almost all Peter Holland sermons, his 20 minute address is in two parts: the second is a Sunday morning, semi-formal theological workout, the first a sort of soliloquy with the neighbours that might be conducted when popping out to cut a cabbage.

"One of the churchwardens in Shildon recently rang up to arrange a funeral," recalls the marvellous Carol Holland. "She told me not to spend £219 in the supermarket again. There's nothing safe with Peter."

He talks of his childhood in Hurworth, son of the local coal merchant, how he learned to drive on the Thorneycroft coal wagon, how the poor folk would collect half a bag a week on the bike handlebars and the posh folk would have three sacks delivered.

(They lived in Bowburn House, which seemed a bit posh, too. "Bowburn pit was where me dad got the coal from," insists Peter afterwards.)

He recalls his time at Stockton church grammar school - given the wrong syllabus, all but two of the class of 50 failed RI - his first curacy at St John's in Darlington, the second in Sunderland.

He'd particularly wanted to go St John's, a 1962 newspaper cutting reveals, because it was working class.

He talks of seasons in the south and of the joys of living in Teesdale, of taking up painting ("Hurworth church should be painted from the other side of the river"), of walking the dog, of Miss Saigon and of taking funerals.

"I count it a very real privilege. I actually believe what God says. It isn't a gate closing, it's a gate opening."

Half way through, he's changed tack. "Often now I listen to a sermon, get to the end and realise Jesus hasn't been mentioned at all."

Back at the Woodland burrow, to coffee and to sausage and bacon sandwiches, he shows off the view, underrates his painting - he failed art as well as RI - digs out the "This Is Your Life" volume presented when he left the country parishes down south.

There's also a warm letter from the Bishop of St Albans, envisaging Peter spending retirement cycling around "Teasdale" with placard and political leaflets. The bishop probably failed spelling.

In the back are the honorary NUM membership and the citation from Seaham Town Council for his solidarity with the desperate pitmen; in the middle there's an affectionate poem in the northern barbarian's honour:

The sermons were grand, PCH lad,

Though some thought a tad over long,

And slept through the hour or two, lad

And only woke up for the song.

Probably, says Peter, both he and the south were surprised at how greatly they enjoyed one another's company. It's good, nonetheless, to have him back up north. Welcome home, old friend.