Five graveyards, the same number of villages, three churches and North Yorkshire police force are providing a new rewarding challenge for a North-East vicar

THE column's multi-talented mother-in-law died last October, her loss felt only last Sunday morning with the discovery of yet another pair of trousers with the right hand pocket worn through.

The seamstress, alas, no longer goes forth to sew.

In the parlance of the North-East of England, it may be said that Stephen Fisher buried her, which is not to say that he got his hands dirty digging the grave but rather that he conducted the funeral service.

Stephen was Vicar of St Peter's in Redcar, an urban parish of 16,000 souls amid Teesside's petro-chemical complexities. This month he moved to Thornton-le-Moor near Northallerton, a rural patch of five villages and as many graveyards, three churches and just 1,500 people.

"I've never lived in the country before. To walk out of the front door and find it almost pitch dark is wonderful," he says, but new pastures by no means end there.

He is also half-time chaplain to North Yorkshire police, a vast beat and a new post. His constabulary duties include co-ordinating the activity of almost 20 local police chaplains, his vestments will include a flak jacket.

He hopes to experience the police service at the sharp and sometimes brutally blunt end, from motor patrols on the A1 to Friday nights in York city centre - "initially it's going to be a bit hair raising," suggests Stephen.

Duly interrogated, he denies previous convictions - not of the sort recorded on the police national computer, anyway - but confesses the time when the traffic boys felt obliged to have a quiet word about his speed. He was going somewhere important, he says.

"I'm not going to hold prayer meetings in the canteen or ask people if they're saved.

"If they want to have a deep conversation that's fine, but the first challenge is to convince people that I'm not part of the system.

"I'm not the chief constable's man and I'm not working for the Police Federation. What anyone tells me is in confidence, but I still have freedom to tell the chief constable where he might be wrong."

He was born in Reading, gained an engineering degree, worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board and for ten years for ICI Wilton before (he says) realising that he was being asked to do something different.

It was as Vicar of the sometimes troubled Grove Hill estate, Middlesbrough, however, he believes he really found faith.

"When all hell broke loose, as it quite often did, I used to think through where God was in all that."

The parish of the Thorntons and the Otteringtons, as properly it is known, offers not only a newly built parsonage but a perhaps different view of creation. The welcome has been overwhelming, he says, and recent experience suggests that they have gained an immensely caring priest.

We renewed acquaintance at the parish church of St Andrew in South Otterington, a mile from county police headquarters. He cycles there - "it's wonderful."

Also in attendance was County Councillor Carl Les, an old friend of the column's who is a member of the police authority, vice-chairman, memory suggested, but like the fondly remembered PC Dixon, Carl is just an ordinary coppers' man.

Chris March, one of the welcoming churchwardens, now runs from home the seven-days-a-week newsagency that has been in the family for 51 years. He seemed remarkably wide awake.

The mid-19th Century church, vividly and attractively furnished, is believed to be the third on the site. The list of rectors goes back to 1254, the memorials dominated by a tribute to William Rutson of Newby Wiske Hall - "a friend of the poor, a zealous promoter of education and piety and an untiring supporter of good works." Rutson's £7,000 entirely funded the church, another £200 built the school which became South Otterington village hall. In Northallerton, a hospital still bears his generous name.

About 30 are present for the Palm Sunday service, the Gospel of the Passion inadvertently amended by a reader who pronounces "Barabbas" as "barbarous" - a slip of the tongue (and rough-hewn anagram) that could be hardly more appropriate.

There are prayers for peace and for those who still make a battleground of Jerusalem; the new incumbent's thoughtful sermon suggests that Judas - like many others, he could perhaps have added - might have had a bad press. "It was a scene that was meant to happen," he adds. The scene in South Otterington seems utterly tranquil - but when you're with the police, you never know what might happen next.

Published: 30/03/2002