Innocent appeal or money-making scam? The vicar and congregation of St Mark's Church, Marske, debate a dilemma which arrived in the post with a Middlesbrough FC season ticket.

AS with much else in these crowded hours, today's column is the child of a birds and stones operation. Needing to be at Marske United FC on Sunday lunchtime, we invited ourselves to the 9.30 service at Marske Parish Church.

It is true that none of United's players or committee appeared similarly to be preparing for the match, but probably they'd been to the eight o'clock instead.

David Lambert, St Mark's vicar, couldn't have been more welcoming. He's a football fan, too, has a season ticket at Middlesbrough, introduced it into his sermon to illustrate a 21st century dilemma.

What does a compassionate person - never mind a priest - do about begging letters, especially from apparently distressed and vulnerable young ladies in Africa and even more so if, as Mr Lambert told his congregation, they had 'the ring of authenticity'?

Is it a case for cheque book or scamcorder, of foreign bodies or innocents abroad? More of that very shortly.

Marske's between Redcar and Saltburn and, for 800 years, served as parish church for both areas, bier and beer carried along the beach before being hoisted for last rites to the cliff top church of St Germain's.

It had been built around 1050, its tower a landmark for North Sea fishermen but its graveyard an attraction to smugglers.

"The sexton and his gang," says David Lambert, "were thought to hide their booty in the graves." Whether for that reason, or that the burgeoning Methodist church was winning the hearts of East Cleveland's alum miners, or that St Germain's was as 'ruinous' as an 1806 report had suggested, the decision was taken in 1821 to replace all but the tower.

"St Germain's was considered to be no longer worthy," says a parish history. Ruinous, or not, it took gunpowder to get rid of it.

The replacement, by every account, was like something from an ecclesiastical end-of-the-pier show. "A sow with one ear," observed Lord Dundas, master of much that he surveyed; "the work of a lunatic architect," says Mr Lambert.

Lord Dundas, who lived in what is now the Cheshire Home in Marske, encouraged and largely financed the building, in 1867, of a more handsome replacement for the one-eared sow.

The new St Mark's was next to the hall; a private porch admitted the gentry. St Germain's, poor sow, was used occasionally until 1955 when it, in turn, was demolished. The tower still stands among the smugglers' gravestones.

St Mark's, sandstone square in the village centre, has a Norman font that was being used as a water trough and a 13th century cross found buried 100 years ago. It is manifestly user-friendly.

Chalk boards of the sort usually found outside pubs advertise the services - "today's specials," says the Vicar - a chap parks his bike at the back, the congregation embraces the stranger.

"It really is a wonderful church, the atmosphere hits you when you come in," says Mary Hodgson.

"Everyone is everyone's friend. There's no need to be lonely with a church like this," says Marjorie Lynn. ("And," she adds, "I'm chapel, really.")

Mr Lambert is sitting at the back, next to the bike, eating a light breakfast from a flask and a Christian Aid carrier bag. He was at the eight o'clock, anyway.

Someone brings him the Daily Mail cutting about the apparent sabotage of Saltburn's Britain in Bloom chances. The rumours, like a well-watered flower bed, are growing apace.

He was born in York in 1944, was Marske's curate from 1967-72, spent 13 years as vicar of North Ormesby, Middlesbrough - overseeing the church's restoration after a disastrous fire - and returned to Marske 13 years ago. His wife has been a dentist there since 1967. "It was a dilemma," he admits. "People love curates but tolerate vicars. It is a lovely place with very nice people and a caring community."

Around 100 are present, including a party of apple pie Brownies from Hull. Mr Lambert's great regret is that St Mark's - "like most of them" - attracts so few young people of its own.

The sermon is pegged on the previous Wednesday's post, principally his renewed season ticket ("around £350, the cheapest seats in the stadium") and the letter, bearing a Ugandan postmark, signed Bridget Masembe.

She is 18, apparently, lost both parents in a land mine explosion, lived with her brother who was badly burned when his thatched house was set alight and suffered still further when the burns turned cancerous.

Bridget now lives with her disabled grandmother, also looks after her younger siblings, works hard hours for little pay, endures sexual harassment, cries endless tears and could resolve it all by qualifying as a nurse and midwife.

£575 would cover a year's college fees and accommodation, if only the vicar could send it. "Your positive reply," the letter concludes, "lies in God's mercy."

Mr Lambert was both moved and disturbed. "I just wish it hadn't come in the same post as the season ticket," he said.

He looked up the college on the Internet, but found nothing. He is an Internet newcomer: were it otherwise he would be more familiar (on any argument) with cries from Ugandan hearts.

Still concerned, he rang the number for the college principal in Kampala contained in Bridget's letter. It was answered by the principal himself, with assurances that all was in order.

He wondered, of course, how they'd come by his address but decided that the letter should seriously be considered. A list had been put up at the back of the church for those who might want to ease poor Bridget's plight.

It was an unforgettable sermon. Afterwards, however, others begged (as it were) to differ with the vicar's conclusion. Nurses in the congregation had had remarkably similar letters, if not necessarily from Bridget Masembe then from others facing a similarly fearful future. Mr Lambert admitted fresh doubts and promised new inquiries. The match had a hard act to follow.

*Principal Sunday services at St Mark's, Marske-by-the-Sea, are at 8am and 9.30am. The Rev David Lambert is on (01642) 482896.

OUR old friends at Newbiggin-in-Teesdale Methodist Chapel - the world's oldest Methodist church in continuous use - stage an exhibition called Still Travelling On today, tomorrow and on Monday from 11am-5pm.

On Saturday August 16, at 2pm, Revival Music looks rousingly at William Booth's 1890 hymn book. All, of course, are most welcome.