A REPORT the other day put attendance at the average "country" parish church at 14, down 39 per cent in a decade and still fast falling. At St Edwin's, in High Coniscliffe, last Saturday evening there was barely room to swing a catechism.

The occasion was unusual, admittedly. Stoker Wilson, the Vicar, was retiring - going for a throng - surrounded by friends from 40 years faithful ministry, mainly in the diocese of Durham.

The everyday story of country folk is rather different, however. St Edwin's attracts 25 on a "very good" Sunday, almost none of them under 50. Its sister church of St Mary, Piercebridge, is lucky to get six.

Coniscliffe - forever Connie, forever bonny - is two or three miles west of Darlington; Piercebridge, home to a Roman fort and a sentient grandfather clock, is a mile beyond that. Their total population is 900.

Stoker Wilson, a bit surprised to find himself there in the first place, will be the parish's last vicar. It will be served from Darlington, where he, in turn, will retire from the stipendiary ranks but hopes to remain active.

"I heard the call to serve Christ a long time ago and I have no reason to believe it has been rescinded," he says.

His previous ministry had been entirely in towns, latterly at St George's, Washington, where the column caught up with him in 1997. The church, and its satellite at the Arts Centre, were youthful, evangelistic, innovative.

It was therefore a bit unexpected when Michael Turnbull, then the Bishop of Durham, asked him to move to Coniscliffe and officially to devote half his working time to being the diocesan information technology adviser.

"Bishop Michael had a habit of surprising people," Canon David Kennedy tells Saturday's congregation.

"I always thought that Washington was my last move before retiring," admits Stoker afterwards. "It was very difficult at first; I've always been a town person rather than a country person."

His two village congregations were traditional, conservative, perhaps even self-contained. St Edwin's was a largely 13th century church on a cliff overlooking the Tees, St Mary's a mid-Victorian building described on the diocesan website as "simple and unprepossessing" - and one of two places of worship in a village of fewer than 100 people.

"Piercebridge is in a particularly weak state at the moment," he concedes. "I would have thought that in a village that size the future is in the Anglicans and Methodists coming together. Two separate congregations just doesn't make sense."

Twice a month, Coniscliffe still uses the 400-year-old Book of Common Prayer. "One of the sadnesses is that because we have used the BCP so much, it hasn't really been child friendly and I believe the church has suffered because of that," says Stoker.

"Young people coming into church find the prayer book difficult to cope with."

He also came with a reputation for 40 minute sermons. "We've got him down to 22," says Piercebridge churchwarden Brian Jefferson, as if the result of a time and motion study.

Brian's sorry to see him go. "It has been a good ministry for a lot of people in a lot of ways," he says.

Saturday's service is what might be termed freestyle, an extraordinary meeting of traditions - broad church and wide age range within the narrow confines of St Edwin's.

There are the raised arms of the evangelicals, the lowered eyes of the traditionalists, a young lady from Washington dancing - leaping, for heaven's sake - in the aisles, songs from the St Andrew's music group in Haughton, Darlington.

When did they last dance in the aisles of St Edwin's? "Not in the 500 years I've been here," says Brian.

Both Canon Kennedy and the departing vicar talk of his "conversion" as a 19-year-old student at Durham University - "I came to the conclusion that, for all my churchgoing, I wasn't a Christian because I didn't understand the knowledge and love of Christ."

Paul Judson, the diocesan communications officer, tells in his sermon how Stoker has brought many Durham church people "kicking and screaming" into the IT age and Stoker himself gives details of the struggle. "In the 1980s the then chairman of the diocesan board of finance, himself a computer professional, told me he could see no way in which the Church could possibly use computers."

There are people in the Church of England, indeed, to whom a lap top is still somewhere to bounce the baby.

At the end of the service, Stoker also thanks his wife Lynn - "my rock" - and talks of his plans for the future. They move shortly to Whinfield, a large housing estate on Darlington's northern hem where St Andrew's oversees a church "plant" in the primary school.

"I have no reason to believe that my ministry will end just because I've reached the magic age of 65 and can claim a church pension," he says.

"It's just a sideways step into some ministry which God will reveal in the future."

His address lasts 12 minutes. "It's the shortest time I've ever heard you talk," says Canon Kennedy.

The village school overflows for the bun fight afterwards, rather more than are in either church for his final Sunday services next day.

In Piercebridge, where once the Romans laid their heads, they may particularly need the fortress mentality. "To be honest," says Brian Jefferson, countryman, "I don't see how much longer we can go on."

Marked by flowers

OUR friends at Harrowgate Hill Methodist church in Darlington have another flower festival this weekend, hoping to raise £1,000 for church funds. Admission is £1.

The festival, on the theme of St Mark's gospel, is open from 10am-5pm today and 2-5pm tomorrow - refreshments and lunches today, afternoon teas tomorrow.

The church, in Lowson Street - just off North Road - also stages a flower festival concert with Val McConachie and Alan Curtis tonight at 7.30pm, tickets £3. Special preachers tomorrow are the Rev John Mason at 10.30am and the Rev Richard Bainbridge at 6pm.