THEY were poor but they were honest - most of them, anyway.

They were sober other than on Fridays and Saturdays, smart in a second-hand sort of a way, peace makers except when provoked or drunk or on the occasion that a wronged husband threatened to cut up his wife with the carving knife because she'd not made sausages for his tea.

She was saved, like many more in the Cannon Street area of Middlesbrough, by Fr Raymond Hooper - and not just from husbands facing sausage starvation, either.

Fr Hooper was Vicar of St Columba's for 35 years from 1940, lived above a potato warehouse in a flat from which he could see trouble coming. It came quite often.

"He had no hesitation at all in getting stuck in," the Archbishop of York told St Columba's centenary service on Sunday. "He would break up fights or confiscate money won at gambling."

Tragically, as we shall hear, no one was able to save poor Father Hooper.

Cannon Street was a cocoon of sit tight, tight-knit terraces near the town centre, never better known than after the 1962 "riot" that made headlines around the world.

"Fr Hooper was very cross about that," said Dorothy Ebdy. "He felt it wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be.

"I suppose it was quite exciting, really, but it didn't last."

They knocked it all down a few years later, took away the community spirit on the backs of lorries, left St Columba's all but marooned.

Dorothy Ebdy, whose forebears were rope makers to Durham jail - and not just so that the governor's daughter could skip to school - had first attended the church in 1942. "Like a lot more, I didn't mean to stay.

"The church I went to was very polite, if you know what I mean, lots of ladies in fur coats and hats which they liked to compare.

"This was totally different. There were workers here, it was more my cup of tea. It was a great community, the church door always open in those days. The children would just come into church, say their prayers and walk out backwards as if they'd been to see the king.

"I suppose if they'd been properly brought up, they had."

Born of the so-called Catholic Revival in the Church of England, it now shares a car park with Sainsbury's supermarket, almost garrotted by the A66, a listed building more beautiful within than without.

"The church tonight looks stunning," Fr Stephen Cooper, the present incumbent, told a large congregation and not one could have murmured dissent.

Dr David Hope, the Archbishop, spoke of St Columba's "difficult and precarious" times and of the need "evangelically to engage" with all elements of society. The centenary exhibition recalled Bolckow Street and Spencer Street, Ascension Day outings to Hob Hole, the St Columba's Festival queens when the procession would stretch half way back to the Newport Bridge.

There was a 1901 census - brickies, labourers, a teacher at number 30 - and pictures of the Hippodrome, the billiards saloon and of Fred Burn the tailor's where, rite of passage, a young man might get his first long trousers when he was 16.

Cannon Street to the right of them, Cannon Street to the left...

They'd also to put someone on the door, because the bairns were sneaking in to pinch the buffet.

It remains high church Anglican - "Fr Hooper used to tell us that the higher we were, the closer we were to heaven" - with incense, votive candles, stations of the cross.

Since not a single member of the congregation now lives within the commercialised parish boundary, however - they return from all over Teesside - St Columba's adapts to changing needs.

Fr Cooper is devoted, innovative and enthusiastic and (as if all that weren't enough) a member of the Campaign for Real Ale, as well.

For five years until funding ran out, the church offered a winter shelter for the homeless; the Greek Orthodox church holds monthly services behind the main altar; a £133,000 Lottery grant will go towards urgent repairs.

The Archbishop also dedicated a new altar, a sign of a new beginning.

Sunday, inevitably, was also an occasion for reminiscence - Fr Hooper, known inexplicably as Fr Rupert, never far from many thoughts.

"Father would stroll down Cannon Street after there'd been a fight and everyone would just separate and go back to their homes. He didn't really have to do anything" recalled Dorothy Ebdy.

"Fr Hooper would walk out of the church, pat all the children on the head and ask if they'd been good," recalled John Lappin, 62.

"We'd always tell him we had, of course, so there was always a sweet each. Sometimes if you were lucky, you got two.

"It was just after the war and sweets were still rationed. No one ever knew where he got them from."

"It was a really good community and Fr Hooper was at the heart of everything in it," said John Hart, an altar boy in 1928.

By awful irony, however, the beloved Fr Hooper himself died violently, victim for a few pounds of one of many he'd tried to befriend.

Dorothy Ebdy had found him gravely injured in the vicarage and would happily have used some of the family hardware not just for his killer but for the doctors she believes equally culpable.

"He'd been on holiday in France and I had his keys. Another girl and I went down for the Monday service and when he wasn't there, went around the vicarage and let ourselves in.

"There was blood, bits of him, all sorts but I couldn't find him downstairs.

"We found him sitting on the bed, speaking in French, in a terrible state. They'd ripped the telephone out, so I had to ring the ambulance from the pub across the road."

Fr Hooper survived for a month, sent under protest to stay with his sister in the south.

"He had a hole in his brain cavity and they missed it. He was in the most awful state and they not only sent him out, they wouldn't even let him go south in an ambulance.

"He was in a coma 25 miles after leaving here. The doctors at the hospital should have been standing in the dock alongside the man who killed him."

Now, however, they must look forward. Engage, said the Archbishop, in a perhaps different and more subtle manner. In a full church many were delighted to be back: the second Catholic revival, they hope, starts here.

* St Columba's centenary celebrations continue tomorrow when the Bishop of Whitby leads Mass at 10am, followed by a lunch. Normal Sunday service is also at 10am. Fr Stephen Cooper is on (01642) 824779.