WHEN coal was king, Horden was the bright jewel in the crown. In 1930, when 4,428 saints toiled below, they mined 6,758 tons in a day - a European record that stood for 30 years. It was reckoned Britain's biggest village, around 15,000 crowded into colliery terraces with names like Second, Third and Goodness Knows What Street and, in the 85 year life of the colliery, 200 men never went home.

Before Vesting Day in 1947, a nationalisation marked in Horden by the ceremonial burying of a hatchet, the Horden Colliery Company owned 1,800 houses in the village and as many again in neighbouring east Durham communities.

There were four pubs and eight large social clubs. There was the Ritz, the Picture House and the Empress Electric Theatre. There were three banks, four betting shops, six butchers, four Co-ops and endless other shops, a fire station, ambulance station, even a morgue. What there wasn't was a damn great new town almost literally across the road.

The coal house door finally closed in February 1986. Whatever Horden breathed when finally it came up for air, it wasn't a sigh of relief.

Now the population is halved, and falling. There's a betting shop, a bank and a bingo, a single pub, a fierce spirit of independence and Peterlee, a new town almost literally across the road.

St Mary's church, built for £9,000 in 1913 at the expense of local landowner Col Ronald Bowden, is one of six churches that survives. Long known as the Cathedral of the Collieries, in the economic and social uncertainty it is now the Miners' Lamp as well.

St Mary's is Church of England, though so resolutely of the Anglo-Catholic tradition - smells, bells and an intractable opposition to women priests - that it now shelters beneath the Forward in Faith umbrella, its formal future uncertain.

High it may be, high and handsome beyond doubt.

Fr Alan Bowser, parish priest for 28 years, insists that whilst their gaze may be turned towards heaven, their eyes are firmly on the ground. "We are a parish ministry for the whole community, not an Anglo-Catholic shrine," he says, and has a hugely loyal following.

Simon Varley, an altar server, draws the analogy with football manager Sir Alex Ferguson. "When Alex Ferguson goes next year, Manchester United will have an almost impossible job to replace him.

"Whenever Fr Bowser goes we will be in exactly the same position. It's something we don't want to contemplate."

Among practices to which he holds is a daily service in church. For that reason Fr Bowser is said rarely to take a whole day off.

Sunday's principal Mass is at 9.30am, last week a thanksgiving for Derrick Mann's 30 years as an altar server. The sermon is devoted to the privilege of their position.

"It is important work for the church and not something to be taken for granted," says Fr Bowser. "It is so special to be allowed to minister in the sanctuary."

There is also a warning that the "ceremonies of the church" should be a case of "Look at God" and not "Look at me."

No altar ego, as it were.

A notice on the door demands "Silence" as peremptorily as might a Victorian library; another urges Horden's faithful to talk to God before the Mass and to one another afterwards.

Derrick Mann has chosen the hymns, old favourites like Praise to the Holiest and Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour; Fr Bowser prays not only that the worship of the church may always be "noble, worthy and inspiring" but, significantly, for the little people of the world - "that they may not be overcome by the mighty".

There are seven in the altar team, about as many choristers, around 80 - mainly older women - in the congregation. Few are miners, aged or otherwise. The air is filled with incense.

Afterwards there's coffee in the church hall, built in 1904 as St Hilda's mission room before St Mary's grew next door.

A friendly and forthcoming folk, they are united in praise of Fr Bowser - "it's his teaching and his care for others, nothing's too much trouble day or night," says Derrick Mann - and in their condemnation of the huge shadow cast by Peterlee new town.

"The village has gone downhill, we've been isolated by Peterlee," says Geoff Freemantle, a Bevin boy in 1943 and now one of the church wardens. "People come and go but all the time it's a struggle."

"Something's gone, it used to be such a thriving community," says Ronnie Howden, 42 years a miner and happy ("it was such good company") to do it all again.

"We have been forsaken," says Elsie, his wife of 52 years. "We're too close to Peterlee and I think we're dying.

"Once you could buy everything and anything in Peterlee, jewellery the lot. Now almost everything's boarded up, two groceries and a curtain shop and for almost everything else you have to go into the town.

"A lot of old colliery villages seem to be coming back to life. Here it just doesn't seem to have happened."

Fr Bowser, initially reluctant to say much - "it's the people's parish, not mine" - loosens upon the realisation that both priest and pursuer are former Bishop Auckland Grammar School boys.

Born in Coundon, one of the Cherrett printing family, he served curacies in Gateshead and Hartlepool before coming to Horden in 1972.

It's the worship of the church and the support of the community which have kept him there, he says. "There was nothing glorious about coal mining, but with the colliery, the heart went out of the place.

"Peterlee has swallowed us up and taken everything away from us but there will still be 600 people in church in Horden. It's a fair higher percentage than up the road."

The Cathedral of the Collieries may now simply be a rather splendid parish church, but the The Miner's Lamp shines on.

* Principal Sunday services at St Mary's are at 8am, 9.30am and 6pm. Fr Alan Bowser is on 0191-586 4423.