WHEN they opened All Saints church at Lanchester in 1926, the Bishop was seated in a Rolls-Royce and hauled through the village by a team of muscular miners.

Whether this was because the car had conked out, or because petrol was rationed, or simply the sort of homage paid to Roman Catholic bishops of that more unctuous day, we have not been able to discover.

Suffice that when the present Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle visited last Friday evening he parked his own car out the back, and that when they went down the social club afterwards, he walked like everyone else.

"We haven't done Bishop Ambrose nearly as proud as they did Bishop Thorman," observed Canon Bob Spence, the parish priest. It is not, of course, to say that they didn't do him due reverence. "I'm not sure that the Church runs to Rolls-Royces," said Bishop Ambrose, afterwards.

It was the parish's centenary celebration, the original tin church opened in 1901 after being brought in bits from St Nicholas's asylum in Gosforth. A convent was established nearby, a school opened by four nuns in 1905. The present church, internally splendid, was designed by a German architect and has a Bavarian appearance. That it cost just £4,500 was partly because the Burnhope miners who hauled the bishop had also lain the foundations after finishing at the coal face and partly because the magnificent marble sanctuary had been in the Regal Hotel in The Strand and was a gift from a parishioner.

Lanchester's between Durham and Consett. Before the parish was formed, villagers walked three miles over the fields to Esh Laude. "It must have been a daunting prospect in winter," said Bishop Ambrose. "I wonder how many people today would contemplate doing such a thing."

The celebration begins at 7pm, the church well filled by 6.30, the MP, the chain gang and representatives from other village churches all in attendance. Catholicism's customary latecomers find themselves cast, if not into outer darkness, then into the side seats, and the shadows.

There, too, is 80-year-old Fr Vincent Mallally, parish priest for 27 years until 1998. Retired? "Depends upon your definition," he says.

He'd arrived on Decimalisation Day, proposed they move forward the altar in accordance with the edicts from Vatican II, met firm opposition. "Though they vote Labour they are very conservative," he said. "When they saw it in operation, they loved it." When he left, he couldn't walk 50 yards. Since the diocese found him a home at Middlestone Moor, near his Bishop Auckland birthplace, he has made a remarkable comeback - "prospered," he says.

Canon Spence, who succeeded him, was the much loved priest of St Augustine's in Darlington, is now one of the diocesan Vicars General and remains a high-profile Newcastle United supporter. "One of the first things he did was move the Saturday evening Mass back a bit," confides a parishioner. "It was a bit tight getting back from St James's Park."

We sit beside a delightful but somewhat fractious toddler, the Smarties saved for ultimate emergency produced ten minutes before the start, the titty bottle soon afterwards.

Coincidence, no doubt, the child is removed the moment the Bishop began his homily on the Beatitudes. "Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about all eight," he says. He would have done in 1926.

The Bishop also dedicates two lovely new windows, designed by Consett-based artist Maralyn O'Keefe to mark the centenary. They reflect the spent coal industry - miner's lamp, no flame - the agricultural community, the Celtic roots of English Christianity and, with Inca designs, the work of missions in Peru.

Fr Joe Plumb, a former chaplain of St Bede's school in Lanchester, has returned from Peru and is given a £500 cheque towards his work; another £500 goes to a Mexican village mission supported by Lanchester's school children.

It's a vibrant service, musically memorable. We sing Christ is Made the Sure Foundation, pray for the "deep down well-being of every child, woman and man in Lanchester."

Afterwards there's a historical exhibition in the church hall that includes a photograph of the Knights of St Columbo. Perhaps they meant Columba. Columbo was the detective in the mucky mac.

The column, unfortunately, is unable to join the party in the social club. Far from the luxuries of Rolls-Royce, it's time for the 765 bus.