LIKE the Windmill Theatre - which never closed - this column strives quite hard to put on a weekly show, and under sometimes difficult circumstances.

Wearing another hat, for example, we were due at 10.15am last Sunday to leave with Wolviston Cricket Club for the quarter final of the National Village Cricket Cup, at Streethouse in West Yorkshire.

Fortunately, St Peter's parish church has its principal service at 9am, celebrates its 125th anniversary next month and has a most welcoming congregation.

Unusually, the Holy Communion service is always from the Book of Common Prayer. "It's what everyone prefers," said David Evans, one of the churchwardens.

About 35 were present, none of them playing members of Wolviston Cricket Club. Doubtless the team would have been there in numbers, of course, save for the necessity of packing the old kit bag.

Wolviston is on Teesside's north-west frontier, said in the Streethouse cricket programme to have a population of just under 1,000, two pubs, a post office, a village green, a duck pond and a junior school - "it meets all the requirements of a traditional English village".

A village history written in 1988 by 17-year-old Adrian Liddell noted, however, that though it can "safely be described as beautiful", it had become "somewhat engulfed in Billingham" and "overshadowed by the immense industry of ICI and other chemical giants". The suggestion is inarguable.

Still, it was lovely on a summer Sunday morning by Scotland pond, which was where we asked a cheery, church-going lady the way to St Peter's.

"If I'd known it was you, I'd have pointed you in the other direction," she said, genially, afterwards.

The first village church was built around 1189, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and somewhat contentiously replaced in 1876 by the present building. "The vicar knocked it down," said Mr Evans, though the memory of the Rev William Eade - who also inspired the building of the new church - may be rather traduced.

In 1872 the church was said to be in a most dilapidated state with a very bad roof and "wretchedly damp and cold". An 1876 newspaper report claimed: "It would be almost impossible to imagine a more inconvenient and comfortless building than the old church. Restoration was out of the question, the necessity of an entirely new edifice acknowledged by all."

A few years earlier, Wolviston's curate had underlined the problems caused by footpaths crossing church land and the presence in nearby cottages of Irish labourers and their families "of not the most cleanly or decent habits". "Abominations," thundered the Vicar of Billingham in support.

The new church cost £2,315, variously described as "elegant" and "handsome", was extended to include meeting rooms and other amenities in 1972 and completely redecorated for the centenary.

Now, however, it is in need of further repair and redecoration, chiefly because of damp. "There's nothing between us and the sea," said Mr Evans. "They say there's no work around, but we can't get people to do it."

Ian Jelley, the new Vicar, was away, the service taken at a day's notice by the Rev Philip Bennison, chaplain to North Tees Hospital. He'd not had time to write a sermon. "You're not supposed to cheer," he told the congregation. (Gordon Harper, the last incumbent, had himself played a bit of cricket when Vicar of Evenwood, which doubtless had a calming effect on the column's old friend Bulldog Billy Teesdale.)

The service was carefully followed, enlivened by hymns remembered from school days like Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies and Come Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs. There was even a line for the cricketers, from the fourth verse of Psalm 31: ""Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me; for thou art my strength."

Afterwards over coffee, church council secretary Mary Price said that people thought there was something special about St Peter's, and clearly she wouldn't disagree. "It's always been a real part of the community, a place of solace and hope for everyone in the village. There's always been a very strong fellowship here."

One of the village cricketers turned up at the end, but only to ensure we caught the bus from outside the pub. They won a wonderful match on the last ball, are at home in the semi-final a week on Sunday.

The column will be at that game, too, but first At Your Service elsewhere. And so the show goes on.

Published: 11/08/2001