Still feeding the poor

The Bishop of Durham is among his parishioners, a short step away and a frequent 8am attender at Monday morning matins. "I suppose he thinks that if he gets me out of the way on Monday morning, the rest of the week will be easy," says the genial Vicar of St Andrew with St Anne, Bishop Auckland.

St Andrew's - South Church - is the more familiar. The daughter church of St Anne is in the Market Place, said to have been established by the 12th Century Bishop Hugh de Puiset in a bid to stop the riff-raff from making Auckland Castle chapel look untidy.

That bit, at least, isn't just John Marshall's magnificently indignant theory. "It was to prevent overcrowding of the Bishop's own chapel and to keep the congregation more select," wrote local historian William Richley in 1872.

Whatever the present exclusiveness of the castle chapel, St Anne's - a little overshadowed by the chateau-esque town hall but in no sense diminished by it - is avowedly open to all.

"There are tramps who come 100 miles to see me," says John. "I give them £3, it's always £3 with me."

The church, at least the fourth on the site, was built for £1,843 13 shillings in 1848. Its additional uses are much more recent.

Downstairs, where one of the side aisles was, there's now a caf reckoned (by the Vicar) to be cheapest in town. "We've been feeding the poor here since the 14th Century," says Nancy Lodge, one of the churchwardens.

(In the 19th Century they were also imprisoning them, the back of the church a tiny drunkards' lock-up without room to swing a cat o' nine tails - which, come to think, is where the feline phrase had its origins.)

Upstairs among the eaves is the most extraordinary charity shop, a floor to ceiling cornucopia of everything from holy water ("we do very well on holy water") to hat stands, communion candles to cushion covers.

"I've not bought anything new for years," says John. "If I'm ever invited to a black tie do I just get a dinner jacket from here, then bring it back again."

Much of it, including house clearances, is collected in the parish bus with "ambulance" emblazoned across the front. The rags, in turn, are taken to a factory in Russia by a bloke who has an Oxford degree. There's probably a story there somewhere.

Particularly, he is proud of the recent sale, for £30, of a tin bath. "I never thought we'd get that much, but a chap bought it straight away. He said it was for his Alsatian."

Since he arrived in Bishop Auckland in 1984, his fund-raising activities have brought in £2m for church and charities. If there are market forces at work there are marshall arts as well, and the Vicar - just 15 months from retirement to the south of France - is manifestly a master. "We take so much out of this town," says John, "it's good to be able to put something back."

First to Evensong, however, and the order of service is top coat and two cardigans, no matter that it's 3pm and pushing 60 degrees outside. Ne'er cast a clout till May is out, as doubtless they say in Bishop Auckland.

The mainly elderly congregation of 20 or so includes several hospital workers, a retired veterinary nurse and three readers - unpaid lay ministers. Bill Sawyer was in charge of the town's ambulance station, until early retirement, Alan Barrasford preaches the sermons, John Fryer, a former Paratroop sergeant major, is also the verger. Nothing, it's said, gets past little John.

The setting is splendid, the service - from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer - not so much read as fervently declaimed. Mr Marshall, in truth, could run for president of the Declaimants' Union.

The hymns are mostly old favourites like Dear Lord and Father of Mankind and its still small voice of calm; the sermon begins uniquely: "The other day my wife was upstairs cleaning the bathroom..."

Alan also includes references to Crossroads, Colditz, Coronation Street, Max Boyce, Scarborough and sardine sandwiches. Who says we never listen to the sermon?

The subsequent tour even includes the Toc H lamp - proverbially dim, now extinguished - once lit at the Royal Albert Hall by the Queen Mother. Ethel Watson points out that it was the women's section's - the men's is in Beamish Museum - and there's talk of Tubby Clayton and Woodbine Willie, it's now impossible to remember if they were one and the same.

In the 1970s, they reckon, the then Bishop of Durham, John Habgood, pondered closing St Anne's altogether. Reprieved - "there was an outcry from all the people who wanted to come back here to be buried" - its possible partial uses included library, museum and "active retirement centre" until Mr Marshall arrived.

"I didn't want any of that, I wanted to make money, do some good," he says.

"It has become the spiritual focal point of Bishop Auckland, a very loving church where a lot of people help and probably don't realise how much good they do.

"We have Muslims and Hindus coming in off the market and I get on very well with them. I've even done a Buddhist funeral.

"People have grown to have an affinity with St Anne's, it's been a way of getting their confidence." It's a confidence, no doubt, that's shared by the Lord Bishop of Durham.

* Sunday services at St Anne's, Bishop Auckland are at 8am and, after Easter, 6pm. The shop and caf are open on Thursdays and Saturdays from 8am-4pm. The Rev John Marshall is available on (01388) 604397.