While Shotton Colliery's population may have shrunk, its 150-year-old church is still standing tall.

UNLIKE certain of the Holy Mysteries, it may not be said that Shotton Colliery hath no beginning and hath no end. It just sometimes seems that way, that's all. Drivers leaving the A19 at Peterlee will at once discover a road sign proclaiming that they are, indeed, in the Colliery. A mile further on, another sign is similarly unequivocal: "Shotton Colliery", it says.

At the next junction, a direction sign pointedly indicates that those looking for Shotton Colliery should turn left.

Seek and ye shall find? Eventually, no doubt.

TWO more churches are in bloom this weekend: St Mary Magdalene's at Trimdon Village and, celebrating its centenary, Station Town and Wingate Methodist church, in Station Town.

On the theme of Faith, Hope and Charity, the Trimdon festival will be open for viewing from 10am-12pm today and 2-4pm tomorrow, with a celebration service at 10.30am.

Across the green in Tremenduna Grange, a related exhibition of the talents of local crafts people - woodwork, art work, Faberge-type eggs, decoupage, card making and even the celebrated tea bag folding - is also open from 2-4pm tomorrow.

Themed on the Swinging Sixties, Station Town's flower festival is open from 10am-noon and 2-4pm from today until Tuesday. The village is roughly between the Trimdons and the A19. Much more from there in next week's column.

The eponymous colliery was sunk by the Haswell Coal Company in 1833, unearthed its first black diamonds eight years later, was closed in 1878, re-opened in 1901 and lost forever in 1972.

Then there were around 9,000 people, almost all dependent on the pit. Now there are around half as many, one of the few visible remnants of the hard hewn past being that Shotton still has an Officials' Club.

The Officials' Club is opposite the Workmens' Club. Whether officials couldn't be classed as workmen is for history and not (of course) for the At Your Service column to determine.

There's also a Shotton Comrades Club and a Shotton Comrades football team, and it was mostly old comrades who gathered last Sunday to mark the 150th anniversary of St Saviour's, the church built to serve the colliery and which comfortably has outlasted it.

The occasion was also marked by a splendid flower festival, funded entirely by the ladies of the village and their friends. They, at least, can still dig deep.

The church was inspired and partly funded by the Rector of Easington and consecrated on July 11, 1854 by the Bishop of Moray and Ross - a bit out of his territory.

The Rev T F Hardwick, Vicar from 1867-90, was also the village doctor, a priest entrusted not just with the cure of souls.

More than 30 years after they finally closed the coalhouse door, however, opinion is divided over whether they were better in the black, or out of it.

"I still believe that those days really were the good old days," says Chuck Bower, a churchwarden and former Shotton miner.

"We have industrial estates and we have new houses, but it changes things. Everyone knew one another; there was a feeling of comradeship and companionship which isn't there today. The bad days are now."

Muriel Peters, a lay reader - a non-ordained and non-stipendiary minister - believes that the village has grown since the pit closed. "We've a wonderful school, nice houses, good friendships with the Roman Catholic church and others."

Jenny Coxon agrees. "It was like Dodge City after the pit closed. I think Shotton's quite pretty now, considering what it was."

Also back where he began is the Rev Paul Greenwell, a miner's son who left Shotton to study botany at Oxford - "I just studied hard at school," he insists - worked briefly in London and then returned to Oxford to train for the ministry.

A bit of a culture shock? "There are rich blessings in Shotton, probably more than there are in Oxford," he says, diplomatically.

After a curacy in Hendon, Sunderland ("even rougher than Shotton") he served in the diocese of Ripon and is now chaplain to the Harrogate hospitals. None of his time has been spent in what is now called a "church plant", which seems rather a pity for a priest with a botany degree.

Sunday's two morning services usually attract around 70 altogether. More than twice as many are present to hear Muriel announce no fewer sets of banns of marriage.

Last month there were four more happy couples. Though it's reckoned that church weddings have fallen by almost 50 per cent in 25 years, they're clearly the marrying kind in Shotton Colliery.

The service is led by the Rt Rev John Pritchard, the Bishop of Jarrow, who (uniquely in the column's experience) uses as a visual aid in his sermon the old childhood game of "There's the church, there's the steeple..."

"We aren't here to serve our members but to serve those who aren't our members, the wider community. We should get stuck in with dirty hands and clean hearts" he says. He is ever-impressive. "Eeeh," says a lady in the pew behind, "what a lovely man for a bishop."

The Church Lads Brigade, in the parish since 1910, sounds the general salute as the congregation leaves. Though the membership is reckoned to be about 40, only two uniformed nippers - the Little Lads Brigade - are on parade alongside the leaders.

"A lot of them don't like coming to church," confides one of the leaders.

Afterwards there's a Brobdingnag among buffets, the chance to meet old friends and to reminisce. "It's great to come back here," says Paul Greenwell. "There's still a wonderful sense of community and the church remains a very important part of that."

The Rev David Boddy will shortly arrive as their eagerly awaited new vicar. The signs in Shotton Colliery are that St Saviour's grace will be with them for a long time yet.

* Usual Sunday services at St Saviour's, Shotton Colliery, are at 8am and 10.30am.

LAST week's column joined celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the Methodist church in Osmotherley, near Northallerton. The following day, a pilgrimage led by Wesley impersonator Mark Topping from Bristol - once a BBC Radio Cleveland man, remembers Harry Whitton in Thirsk - added to Ossie's ecumenical spirit.

It poured all afternoon, recalling an open air meeting taken by Wesley in 1748 on one of his 18 visits to Osmotherley. "It rained almost all the time," his journal noted, "but none went away."

Some things never change.