At Your Service: Byron and a feast of words

TODAY'S may be the only church column ever to have included Lord Byron and Paul Gascoigne in the same breath - Byron in his pomp and Gascoigne in his pyjamas.

From the wonderful 12th century church of St Mary the Virgin, on the cliffs above Seaham, the column will tell of good folk, of fine preaching and of proud traditions vigorously defended.

Fr Terence Matthews, it might also be added, warned last Sunday's congregation that if their "awful" singing didn't buck up he'd be to take away in a van.

Firstly, however, a little red blooded history may both be instructive and necessary, in order yet again to prove that there is nothing new under the sun. In 1476, the Bishop of Durham sent an emissary with a summons to the then small village of Seaham to sort out the recalcitrant church folk, suspended for not paying their episcopal whack.

A subsequent letter from the Prior to the Bishop records that the messenger had been received with something less than civility.

"A gentilman there abidynge, called Humfrey Lile, toke ye said citacion and rave it in pecys, and manassid ye berer thereof to smyte thrugh both ye cheks bot if he did (if he did not) ete it.

"He for grete fere and drede of hys lyve, ete part of ye same."

His unwanted supper over, the ambassador was set backwards on his horse and made to ride through the area proclaiming the error of his ways. The bishop, probably, went purple.

History repeats itself. Though the process is now more legal than brutal, St Mary's is again in suspension, the Bishop of Durham - the last one, anyway - not best pleased, either.

The village had been granted to the church by King Athelstan in 930AD, and with no room for doubting his intentions. "All this I give with God's and St Cuthbert's witness, that whoever misappropriates anything from it should be condemned on the Day of Judgement along with Judas the traitor and cast into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels."

They showed the old king's message to the archdeacon when the latest carry-on was coming to the boil. "He laughed," recalls Ray Armbrister, one of the churchwardens, though he may have been next in the firing line.

Unwilling to join a "locality" of other Seaham area churches - "we weren't compatible" says Ray - it continues under the oversight of a "flying bishop", uses only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, has seen numbers steadily grow.

"They call it a British Museum service," says Ray, "but you know what they say about the proof of the pudding."

The old village was built around the manor where Seaham Hall - former stately home, sanatorium and now opulent (and expensive) hotel - now stands. Though superbly set, not everyone found it attractive.

An early 19th century visitor described it as "the most primitive village ever met with, a dozen or so of cottages with no trade, no manufacture and no business".

Byron, considered a miserable beggar by the locals, was there in 1814 to woo Anne Isabella Milbanke and thought it "a dreary coast with nothing but county meetings and shipwrecks".

On another occasion, he wrote of his state of "sameness and stagnation... gathering shells on the beach and watching the growth of stunted gooseberry bushes in the garden".

His marriage took place not in the old church but in a room at the hall. Like so many ships it, too, was quickly on the rocks.

Its population moved down the coast to Seaham Harbour, St Mary's has had no vicar of its own since 1933. "They call me the vicar but I tell them I'm just the old man who takes the services," says Fr Matthews cheerfully.

The huge, Renaissance style vicarage became a girls' remand home and has since been rented out, latterly - at last - to Gazza. "He was never a ha'porth of bother," says Ray Armbrister, "had a drink, went to the betting shop in the Harbour, gave the old men a tip if he had one. We saw him one Sunday morning chatting away in the garden in his 'jamas, but mostly he couldn't even empty the bin because of all the photographers outside."

Ray, retired mining engineer, has a goody bag awaiting our arrival at the stone built, box pewed, Grade I listed church - guides, history, information about the Prayer Book Society about which he's fanatical.

For Armbrister read arm twister, wherever the PBS is involved.

Fr Matthews, 68, had been a priest in Acklam, Horden - "the great St Mary's" - Witton Gilbert, Sunderland, Cleadon and Hebburn, retired early, agreed six years ago to help out for six weeks at St Mary's, Seaham, and has been helping out ever since.

He describes himself as "more of an English Anglo-Catholic", delivers a superb, pulpit slapping, palm thumping, home truths sermon in the manner of a man who enjoys every minute of the exercise.

"It's said that people don't listen to sermons any more. They do here," he says. The service lasts exactly an hour, the congregation of 40 or so including 97-year-old Roy Snowdon, churchwarden emeritus. The singing seems all right, too.

They are aware, no doubt, that 50 years after the bishop baiting folk of Seaham forced the messenger to eat his words, his grandson and other family members were convicted of treason and "put to execution in the extremytie".

St Mary's remains a memorable place of worship. There will, it is to be hoped, be a rather happier ending.

* Mass is said at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Seaham, on Saturdays at 10am with a sung Mass on the first Sunday of each month - and on Easter Sunday - at 11am. Tours can be arranged through Ray Armbrister (0191-534-6492).

The Prayer Book Society is at 16 New Bridge Street, London EC4V 6AZ.