BOLTBY is the perfect English village, last Sunday the sort of evening which you want to hang for ever above the fireplace. Incorrigibly, however, we begin with the parish notice board next to the hall.

Zorro is missing, a doubtless combative ginger tom. The hillside villages fete will be held in July and Bernie Ecclestone is to give a talk on the late 19th century houses of Thirlby, up the road.

Bernie Ecclestone is reckoned the world's richest man, the diminutive Formula 1 motor racing magnate married to the bespoke blonde, but upon reflection we guessed there to be at least two people of that name.

If they're one and the same, we've just missed one hell of an exclusive.

The notice board also announces the myriad services of the district council's community environmental officer, listed alphabetically from ash closets through new age travellers, pest control, pet shop licences, pigeon droppings, public conveniences and on, exhausted, to water supplies and wormeries.

The lady thought there a certain poetry to it all. You could imagine someone like Robert Powell reading it, she said, or maybe Flanders and Swann.

Boltby is north-east of Thirsk, a village of just 43 mainly sandstone dwellings which nestles in the shelter of the Hambleton Hills as surely as a chocolate bar in its sunlit silver wrapping.

There are roads like Lavender Lane and Sneck Yate, Gatherstones and Sofas Cottage, a bridge over the Gurtof beck from which a troll might at any moment be expected to stick its ugly head in search of a savoury supper.

There's also an area called Paradise, High Paradise and Low Paradise. Sunday was Paradise regained.

Though the school, the shop, the two pubs and the Wesleyan chapel have long since ceased to be used for those purposes, the village hall and the delightful little Holy Trinity church remain.

It was there, as the notice board jubilantly proclaimed, that a Songs of Praise evening was to be held last Sunday in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care and to which the indefatigable Mr Terence Allinson, churchwarden, had invited us.

Simply consider some of the hymns: How Great Thou Art, the nation's number one, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, number two, O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing, Praise My Soul the King of Heaven, Love Divine, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah...

Consider the accompaniment: the Thirsk Royal British Legion band, given vivacious what fettle (as the musicians say) by Mary Dickenson; John Foxall, a dab hand on the organ; the kilted pipers of the 40th Regiment Royal Artillery, known as the Lowland Gunners.

There's a bit in Hamlet about certain Scotsmen being unable to contain themselves, a suitable euphemism, at the sound of the bagpipes. The column, solidly Sassenach, reacts in much the same way.

The RBL band also played Land of Hope and Glory ("a very British tune," said Mr Allinson) and had begun with Blaze Away, a march to which various words have been put.

How many in church, we wondered, were mentally singing about the bloomin' great puddin' that came floating through the air. The lady wasn't. "I know the rugby version," she said.

Then there were the Frith family, angelic singers from Borrowby on the other side of the A19. "The Frith family trio," announced Mr Allinson and, since there were six of them, hastily doubled his estimate.

It was, we supposed, something pretty close to heaven. The lady, no less greatly enjoying herself, recalled the opinion of Chesterton, or someone like him, that heaven was pate de foie gras with trumpets.

At the interval we adjourned to the evening churchyard. If not quite getting their pipe, the Lowland Gunners got their Capstan; the blessed band folk drank orange juice from plastic cups.

Terence Allinson continued informatively: William Williams, who wrote Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah, had 240 compositions in the Welsh hymn book but just one in the English; Evelyn Glennie owns 1,400 percussion instruments and, being completely deaf, picked up the vibrations from the floor; How Great Thou Art was originally a Swedish poem, translated into Russian but not heard in England until 1949.

We finished, perhaps as we were bound to do, with The Day Thou Gave Us Lord Is Ended. It would be remembered, treasured, for a very long time.

NUTS AND BOLTBY

PUBLISHED in 2002 but marking the Millennium, the people of Boltby produced a meticulously researched and richly illustrated history of their ancient village. Nuts and Boltby, ten stones which might otherwise never have been unturned:

* Because of an agreement reached when Boltby reservoir was built in 1880, villagers pay no water rates - despite periodic legal attempts by Yorkshire Water to stop their buckshee tap.

* The Women's Timber Corps was billeted in Boltby during the war, though allowed into Thirsk on Saturday evenings. ("The night life in Boltby was obviously quite limited," concedes the history.)

* The principal 19th century industries were linen weaving, lime kilns and farming.

* When the Boltby estate was auctioned in 1956, just two of the houses had flushing toilets. The last ash closet was replaced in 1983.

* Boltby had a Second World War prisoner of war camp, but only for the most trustworthy. Inmates spent the evening hand-crafting wooden toys, still treasured, for local children.

* In the late 1950s there were 15 milk-producing farms and smallholdings. Now there are none.

* Chelsea FC managing director Colin Hutchinson is a Boltby lad whose first sporting experience was commentating on the top grade motor cross meetings which took place in the parish.

* Though earlier churches had stood on the site, Holy Trinity was restored in 1855-56 at a cost of £490. £150 was raised at a single bazaar.

* A 'dummy' airfield was built in the parish during the war, complete with wooden planes and fake anti-aircraft guns, to lure the enemy into hitting a false target.

* History's most bad tempered racehorse may have been Vatican, so vicious that when on stud duty in the 1850s it was not only muzzled but had a leg chained to each corner of his box. The horse, says the Boltby book, was 'somewhat ill-named'.