The column took advantage of the publication of a post-war history of St Cuthbert's church to pay a long overdue visit to its close neighbour.

ST Cuthbert's church is little more than 100 yards from these offices. We toil within the sound of its blithe bells, owe the Priestgate address to its reverend proximity, may almost have become over-familiar (which is by no means to say contemptuous.)

In almost ten years' At Your Service, for example, we have never reported from Darlington's parish church save for the funeral of Denis Weatherly, a send-off so musically memorable, so grand and so entirely fitting that its inclusion became happily inescapable.

Prompted by publication this week of a post-war history of the town centre church once known as the Lady of the North, it was at last time to say hello to the neighbours - and like that of the prodigal son, the reception couldn't have been warmer.

The Rev Robert Williamson has been Vicar for four years, a man manifestly enjoying his ministry.

"We have two main priorities in church, the ministry of welcome and trying to ensure that worship is the very best we can do, in music and in every other respect," he said.

There's the rub: the welcome was wonderful, the liturgy clear and carefully explained, the sermon splendid, the choir coruscating, the ceremonial effectively executed and the organ utterly buggered.

The term may not necessarily be ecclesiastical, the note discordant, but the crude reality is that they need £400,000 to make it sing again.

St Cuthbert's history is beset with such building blocks. "Appealing for money is the most unpleasant part of a parson's job, he has infinitely more important things to do," said the Rev George Holderness in launching a "preservation" appeal in 1953.

Robert Williamson agrees. "It's a lovely ancient parish church, dipping into 1,000 years of prayer, but there's a heavy burden of maintenance.

"We have fun raising money. I don't see it entirely as a negative thing, but it is a problem. It's like painting the Forth Bridge, you're never going to be able to sit back and say you've finished. It's unreasonable to expect the parishioners to find £400,000, and you don't want to seem always to be asking for money, but if there's a major challenge it's amazing how people rise to it."

The present church was built around 1240, the spire delayed until the following century for fear that it might provide a landmark for marauding Scots. In 1750, the spire was struck by lightning, obliging the removal of the top 40 feet. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner thought St Cuthbert's "uncommonly beautiful", the guide supposes that no parish church in the Durham diocese has been more written about - by some, anyway - or more photographed.

They are conscious of their central position, and of the need for outreach. How many Darlington folk, busying about life's market place, have even been inside?

The service was 10.30am Holy Communion, probably around 150 people present but the celebration a little overshadowed by the passing, a few days earlier, of Canon Alan Lazonby, a much-loved former Vicar of Haughton-le-Skerne and of Witton Park. His funeral was at St Cuthbert's yesterday. Donations, perhaps inevitably, were invited for the organ restoration appeal.

It was Epiphany, now known in the Church of England as the Baptism of Christ. Hymns included Come Down O Love Divine and Breathe On Me Breath of God. Inside the hymn book was a dedication thanking God for a lovely black cat. This should not be seen as a reference to Sunderland FC, latterly nicknamed the Black Cats for the convenience of satiated sub-editors but used by one else alive.

The sermon was on the Holy Spirit. The vicar told of his curacy in Kirby, among Liverpool's humbler quarters, where he owned an elderly green Mini. "It wasn't much to look at but in Kirby that was probably a good thing, you never knew if it would be there when you went outside again."

He'd had a prang with a neighbour, borrowed the neighbour's shining Austin Princess to get himself to the church on time and, still four miles away, ran out of petrol and had to be rescued by a pretty pickle policewoman. "I was a bachelor in those days," he added.

The upshot - "the profound philosophical question" said Mr Williamson - was what good is a car without petrol? "A car without petrol is as much good as a Christian without the Holy Spirit."

Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, among the congregation's more colourful 20th century characters, is said to have put ten shillings into the collection plate if he disapproved of the address and £1 if it met expectations. This was a sovereign sermon, undoubtedly.

Afterwards, there was coffee and things in the church centre, a chance to look at a photographic display of the organ's "innards" - had the organ been human, the patient would have been in intensive care - and to talk to Neil Hedworth, who plays the ailing instrument so valiantly. "It's diabolical," he said, though determined not to let the devil take the hindmost.

Whatever sort of day in the office, it had been a thoroughly invigoratingmorning with the good folk up the road.

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