IN the ageless argot of journalism, April 12-13, 1902, wasn't a good news weekend - by which the innocent would infer the exact opposite. Nothing at all horrible happened: that was the bad news.

Just about the most exciting thing in the following Monday's Echo was the advertisement for Calvert's Carbolic Powder ("prevents fever and contagious diseases".)

We also reported that police in Darlington had arrested someone for stealing Mr Latimer the solicitor's bicycle, that the Bishop Auckland Equalised Order of Druids had had held an uneventful annual meeting, that the Durham hinds' hirings in the Market Place had averaged wages of 22 shillings a week and that at Marske-by-the-Sea the Rev F Grant James had lamented a wave of irreligion.

He blamed the arrival of Sunday trains.

On Saturday, April 12, 1902, the stone laying also take place of what is now Harrowgate Hill Methodist Church in Darlington, tucked away behind North Road.

Good news, for certain.

The Gothic structure would seat 450 and cost £1,260; a bottle containing the Methodist Recorder and Methodist Times, the quarterly plan and other documents was placed beneath one of the stones, a public tea followed - it always did - with a concert by the North Eastern Railway Temperance Choir.

"Whatever the Wesleyans have in hand, they will do it well," observed the good Alderman Widdowfield, in the mayor's unavoidable absence.

So it proved. Last Friday evening they marked the centenary of the stone laying, to be followed by ten months of carefully planned celebrations culminating in the anniversary on February 7, 2003, of the first service.

Plans for the future include modernisation and refurbishment possibly costing up to £750,000. "The great dream," says Graham Morgan, the minister; "the project," says the architect's drawing, more prosaically.

This is one church, at any rate, that isn't about to become a second hand furniture showroom.

The folk who live on Harrowgate Hill have had many churches from which to choose. Within a few hundred yards, even now, are St Mark's (C of E), St Thomas Aquinas - the Roman Catholic church celebrating its own 75th anniversary this weekend - the Elim Pentecostal church and a small building with a biblical text outside, known local as the Apostolic Church.

Nearby, too, is the North Cemetery chapel, hideously vandalised. The cemetery itself has similarly suffered. Nothing, apparently, is sacred.

Harrowgate Hill chapel stands on the junction of Lowson Street and Bowman Street. Not one of the town's ecclesiastical landmarks, it may be out of sight but is by no means out of mind.

A "model Sunday school" had opened on Lowson Street in 1871, the present church adding schoolrooms in 1912. There'd also been a Primitive Methodist Church, up the road in Thompson Street. They amalgamated, at last, in 1961.

The stone laying centenary is led by the Rev Graham Carter, chairman of the Darlington Methodist District - from the Yorkshire dales to Teesside and north of Durham - and by Graham Morgan. They are dressed almost identically, as if by a Methodist Marks and Spencer.

"It's our second home, the place where I can bring my problems," says Margery Jackson, christened there in 1933 and never far away thereafter.

The chairman takes "Living stones" as his sermon theme - "it was too good an opportunity to miss," he says - but misses "The Church's One Foundation" from the hymn sheet.

It would have been there, nowt more certain, in an Anglican church.

Graham Morgan prays that they may keep the doors open and the lights on, that they will always be there to comfort the sorrowing, strengthen the weak and show compassion to the needy.

The congregation, however, reflects a national decline. Though many organisations still meet on chapel property, maybe 80 - few under 50 - are under orders in church for the start of the foundation course.

Graham Morgan remains upbeat. "People are confident that the church has a future, there is a sense that God hasn't finished with us yet.

"We have to ask some serious questions, but there is so much going on that we cannot be too downhearted."

There's also an exhibition of the church past and present, back to the silver trowels which precisely a century previously had laid maybe two dozen initialled stones - Harrowgate Hill Methodist Church has more than one foundation.

The Golden Jubilee brochure ("minimum price one shilling") had included a message from the 1952 minister, the Rev J Arthur Cowe. "If, as so many people tell us, a revival of religion is just around the corner, not only are we ready for it but we can justifiably say that it has already started in our midst."

They were further aided, added the jubilee brochure, "by the use of modern devices like the film projector and the radiogram."

Fifty years later there is again a splendid tea; 50 years later they are again ready and waiting. "We have never lost our faith," says Brian Sowerby, the senior steward; the good news takes a little longer.

l Harrowgate Hill Methodist Church has a centenary flower festival weekend from May 30-June 4 and special events throughout the year. Normal Sunday services are at 10.30am and 6pm. The Rev Graham Morgan is on (01325) 464916

Published: 20/04/2002