Linda Shipp began as a lay chaplain for the deaf. Now recently ordained, her signed Holy Communion brings communities together.

Linda Shipp was ordained priest two Sundays ago and joyously celebrated her first Holy Communion last Sunday in the town where she was born. "You may have noticed that she is a lady," Chris Greenwell, the vicar, tells an almost overflowing church. "Some people think it's a bit difficult for a lady to be a priest."

The Rt Rev Robert Ladds, Bishop of Whitby, is among them. Since he finds himself unable to ordain women, though said resolutely to 'affirm' their ministry, Linda and others from the north-east of the diocese of York have been ordained by the Bishop of Hull instead.

Chris Greenwell takes a different view. "It would be a funny world if we were all made the same way," he says.

"I think it's a bit like saying that you can't be a priest if you don't look like Jesus, with long hair and a beard. It lets me out for a start."

Mr Greenwell is both clean shaven and as bald as a basilica.

Linda Shipp, his curate in the parish of Kirkleatham, Redcar, is a 53-year-old grandmother, former Methodist and long-time church worker whose road to the priesthood was somewhat improbably signed.

She was initially a lay chaplain to the deaf, persuaded to consider ordination by the chairman of the Northumbria Deaf Mission over coffee at Debenham's in Newcastle.

"After the first deaf service I attended the people with ordinary hearing were all at one side of the hall and the deaf and hard of hearing at the other," she says. "It was awful, such a poor impression. We have to integrate them fully into the body of the church."

After seven years she is also fluent in sign language, notoriously difficult to master. "The hardest bit was learning 'church' language," she says. "There are so few people who teach it."

The parish has two churches, the 1970s St Hilda's on the sprawling Lakes estate and the Georgian, Grade 1 listed St Cuthbert's in Kirkleatham Village - one of the few British churches with a mausoleum attached - said in the guide to possess a dignified austerity. "If it is stately, then its stateliness derives from its fine proportions alone," adds the guide.

Both congregations crowd into St Cuthbert's on Whit Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, for her first celebration. "I could almost literally feel their love and support," says Linda afterwards.

There've been churches on the site since the ninth century, when monks carrying Cuthbert's body northwards stopped at Kirkleatham to rest. This church, completed in 1763, was funded by the Turner family, masters of Kirkleatham Hall for almost 200 years and chief recumbents in the mausoleum.

Sir William Turner was money lender to the ever-impoverished Charles II. They also built inns and provided the first bathing machines on the beach at Coatham.

The Newcomens, who followed in the early 19th century, were benefactors, too .

Mrs Teresa Newcomen founded the country's first cottage hospital, at North Ormesby. But the benefactors proved less popular in 1865 by closing all the pubs in Coatham and Kirkleatham after the vicar complained that they preferred their ale to his sermons.

Persistently wet, Sunday is not at first the sort of morning to bring them rolling back to Redcar. "Good morning, that's if it is a good morning," says the chap handing out hymn books, sounding unerringly like the melancholy Eeyore - you know Eeyore, him in Winnie the Pooh - whose outlook was equally weatherbeaten.

The pre-service conversation is otherwise of Harvey Smith, of flat roofs (efficacy of) and of George Snow, a previous Bishop of Whitby who once famously told the column that he gave up picking his nose for Lent.

Linda's husband, son and granddaughter are there, too, the church so full that from where we sit the tops of the cubs' and brownies' standards may be seen but nothing whatever of their gill-sized bearers.

Mr Greenwell, before embarking upon the improbability of his ever looking like Jesus, sketches on a flip chart, inviting the congregation to guess his subject.

He's been a priest for 21 years, including spells in South Bank and Scarborough. Drawing on experience, as it were.

The first impression, he says, is a bear climbing up a tree. The second is a bear climbing down a tree.

The third, though supposed by someone near the back to be a dalmatian in a snowstorm, is one of those optically illusory impressions.

"Can you see Jesus?" he asks. Some of us, in truth, can barely see the flipping flip chart.

There are splendid hymns - Come Down O Love Divine, Lord for the Years - thoughtful prayers, traditional language, anthems from the choir, sustained applause for the curate and a parish buffet to follow.

"It just feels wonderful. I haven't words to describe it really," says the admirable Mrs Shipp, who hopes to continue in parish work whilst retaining a specialist ministry to the deaf.

Perhaps, she supposes, she wasn't ready for the priesthood before. "I feel that I am now."

* Regular Holy Communion services for the deaf and hearing attract people from all over Durham and Cleveland to St Hilda's, Roseberry Road, Redcar. The next, signed by Mrs Shipp, is tomorrow at 3pm. The Rev Linda Shipp is on 01642 476072.