WHORLTON appears to have gone downhill all the way. There are the ruins of a 14th century castle of the sort in which Lord Snooty and his pals once lived, the remains of a lovely old church to which a certain scandal is attached, and not much else at all.

It was occupied by the Romans, fortified by the Saxons, visited by the Plantaganets and Tudors and at some point thereafter seems suddenly to have upped sticks and left.

It is - was? - in North Yorkshire, a few miles south of Stokesley. Half a mile down the road, another village sits serenely on either side of a stream: the ecclesiastical parish remains Whorlton, the bairns are taught at Whorlton Parochial School but the village now answers to Swainby.

Whether it was the plague which drove them down there, no one really seems to know.

The Church of the Holy Cross was consecrated in 1877, two years after the original Whorlton church was deemed unsafe, and will welcome a new Vicar in September. Four or five times a year, however, the bell tolls to call faithful villagers to a service at the "Old Church" up the hill.

There's Easter, of course, All Souls Day, Boxing Day - "a bit parky, really sorts out the men from the boys," said Robin Cook - and Lammas, the festival of the first fruits, marked memorably last Sunday.

It's approached through an avenue of yew trees in the still-used graveyard, the nave derelict but the 14th century tower and chancel remarkably preserved and recently restored. All around are the Cleveland Hills and the tomb stones, earliest from 1699, many bearing little homilies for the edification of those still living:

Young men beware, your precious time well spend

Few were my years, my life did quickly end;

Death gave the summons, ere I thought him nigh

Then be prepared, for you too soon must die.

Or, no more cheerfully:

All you who come and see this stone

Think how quickly she was gone;

Death does not always warning give,

Therefore be careful how you live.

Or, beneath a skull and crossbones:

In perfect health he went from home,

And little thought his glass was run;

But dying in so short a space

I hope he's found him a good place.

The seats had been fetched out from the chancel, which also still houses a Norman font, flower-decked altar and the wooden effigy, vainly coveted by the British Museum, of the second Lord Nicholas de Meynell - nowadays known as His Nibs - who died in 1322.

Said in Joan Hartley's splendid church history to have been a "personal friend" of Edward I - may friends be impersonal? - Sir Nicholas had a son and heir by his mistress Lucia de Thweng, reckoned by Robin Cook to have been "poached" from Kilton Castle, near Loftus.

"Quite a scandalous lady," said Mr Cook.

"Notorious," adds Mrs Hartley.

Though the history also talks of "an ancient but still tuneful harmonium", they'd engaged Guisborough Salvation Army band - and in shirt sleeve order, though it was raining back in Guisborough.

If eyes were cast heavenward even more than usual, it was because it looked a bit black over Whorlton, too. (The column, conversely, kept glancing behind. As always, we were praying for the photographers to turn up.)

They were warmly welcoming, Lionel Smith, churchwarden, with the sort of New Forest accent which made John Arlott incomparable; Robin Cook, knowledgable and voluble; John Wilson, former Vicar of Whorlton and now again helping out in his retirement.

Retirement? "I'm going round like a one-armed paper hanger," Mr Wilson had said when we rang to set up the column.

It was billed as an open air Songs of Praise, 70 or so folk and a spotty dog in a setting of much tranquility. There were a couple of summery poems, prayers for the farmers, familiar hymns like Morning Has Broken, For the Beauty of the Earth and All Things Bright and Beautiful. During the latter, a wasp appeared, hovered about two inches away and seemed to have settled for the duration.

It was tempting to fetch it one with the hymn book, but in the circumstances, this seemed inappropriate.

There were also numbers 90 and 309, but these proved to be unclaimed raffle prizes from a function the previous Friday.

"This place never ceases to weave its magic," Mr Wilson told them, and it was entirely easy to understand where he came from. Even the rain stayed off.

Afterwards, there were drinks, wonderful home-made cakes and a chance to chat. None hurried homeward. "It's a sweet old thing, a very special place this church," said Mr Cook, but they'll be back inside on Boxing Day.

Great expectations

THE best Jewish mother story is still that of the mother of James and John, name otherwise undisclosed, demanding that her boys sit either side of Jesus in heaven.

The Rt Rev Edwin Barnes, retired Bishop of Richborough, referred to it affectionately at the patronal festival of St James the Great in Darlington.

His own mother's an active 94. "Embarrassment? She has it down to a fine art," he said.

Regulars may now be familiar with St James the Great, still Anglican but somewhere higher than the Vatican ceiling, and with the column's need for an annual fix there.

They queued like Albert Hill Club on New Year's Eve - 369 in church, 22 priests, 340 communicants and Fr Ian Grieves, the parish priest, apologising that they'd run out of orders of service.

"A good fault, I'm sure, in the present Church of England," added Fr Grieves, mischievously.

Musically, it's magnificent, choreographically colossal. We prayed for the Pope but not for the Archbishop of Canterbury, processed grandly around the outside of the church and adjourned across the road for the annual bun fight.

"Brilliantly executed," said the Bishop of Jarrow, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, there as a lounge-suited observer. "Astonishing," said Coun Ron Lewis, Darlington's mayor.

* The next patronal festival is at 7.30pm on July 26, 2004. Book now to reserve your order of service.