HAMSTERLEY has a pub, a club, a riding school, a shop and a hall. A placard on the road into the village announces that Secondary Cause of Death will be at the hall on May 24 and 25, though fails to make clear whether it is a play, a heavy metal band or an exhibition warning of the hidden dangers of what the Edwardians called the nicotian sootherer.

The small west Durham community also has three churches, which might be considered excessive.

St James's, half hidden, stands almost half a mile from the village - no one knows why it so greatly keeps its distance - a cruciform, originally 12th century building which remains delightful despite a 19th century opinion that it had "suffered greatly from restoration".

The Methodist chapel is more typical, not least in the care and attention so evidently bestowed upon it. There is tiered seating, schoolroom out the back, wall clock stopped all this time at quarter to one.

Almost over the road, the Baptist church is gloriously unique, a Grade II* listed building, recently reinvigorated. You could write a book about it. Someone did.

Between them on a good Sunday they might attract 50 worshippers, plus the bairns at the Sunday school in the Methodists. Last Sunday, after two years talking and planning, they signed an agreement to work towards "visible unity".

It was Whit Sunday, Pentecost, joint services held successively in the three different churches. "A Pentecost marathon," said Myra Blyth, deputy general secretary of the Baptist Union, though a triathlon might have been more appropriate.

Since the column gets a bit pious about the House divided against itself, we should perhaps record that the first hymn was "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, Forgive our foolish ways".

There was a Bishop and an Archdeacon, a Methodist chairman and a Methodist superintendent, the regional minister of the Northern Baptist Association and sundry other clergymen, collared and otherwise.

"A gaggle of clerics," suggested Richard Bainbridge, Methodist minister for the area, though there may be better collective nouns. A mass of clerics might only apply to Catholics and high Anglicans, but a cloth of clerics, maybe? Or a prayer?

We began at St James's, all invited to share Holy Communion or to receive a blessing, though the newly united mission to Hamsterley may first have to tackle the menfolk who dropped off wives and scurried to golf course or to garden.

Thereafter all marched back to the Methodists, the polliss in attendance to make the paths straight, the Sunday School bairns leading with bright blazing flags and with a banner proclaiming the new Local Ecumenical Project - or LEP as, in short, it is known.

One chap carried the Independent on Sunday instead, though resisting any temptation to wave it over his head.

At the Methodists we sang To God be the Glory, offered thanks for the life of the Church in Hamsterley, heard Mrs Blyth speak about the new challenge.

"We are not negating the past but embracing the future," she said.

The Baptist Church, built in 1774 and so compact that the preacher is said to be able to shake hands with his listeners in the gallery, may perhaps be the least obvious three in a bed fellow.

Either side of the path, the bairns lined up to greet us - for some reason - with For He's a Jolly Good Fellow; inside, a lady in the pulpit waved a flag around as we sang an infectiously upbeat rendition of Be Thou My Vision.

Always evangelistic, fulcrum of Baptist activity throughout the North-East in the 18th and 19th centuries, the church had declined to a single member before the arrival in 1995 of the Rev Freddie Latham-Durrant and her husband Gordon from Hartlepool.

Their daughter was married there, believed to have been the first wedding for at least 200 years.

Now a worldwide mission called Insight into Life is based at the church, proclaiming "Biblical worship" but assigning modern technology - multimedia, multi-sensory - to the task.

"The others think I'm a bit wayward," confessed the energetic Mrs Latham-Durrant, just back from spreading the word in America.

The covenant was signed at the Baptist church, committing the holy trinity to greater witness and working together, even to discussing new ministerial appointments with their neighbours.

Already there are monthly village services, joint house groups, united pastoral care teams.

A wondrous and doubtless ecumenical buffet followed in the village hall, the stage already set for Secondary Cause of Death, which proved to be a play. The axe on the wall, however, suggested a fairly primary means of being shuffled off the mortal coil.

It had been very good to be there - one small step for man, one giant LEP for Hamsterley.