The spritual Tardis

Clearly resourceful, he turned the back yard shed into a pub, instead. It was called the Drunken Duck, was fulsomely furnished - not least with abundant alcohol - and made for a memorable column.

The Drunken Duck was positively wooden, however, compared with the refulgent glories of Les Barras's shed, a spiritual Tardis in a busy part of Darlington.

Beyond doubt and perhaps beyond imagination, everything in the garden shed is lovely.

Externally it could be just another bottom of the garden bolt hole, a place to pot and to potter. Inside it is quite magnificent, the chapel of St Cedd - pronounced "said" - within the Celtic Orthodox Church.

Its clergy are sumptuously attired, the shed divided into areas symbolising "earth" and "heaven". Only the initiated, and certainly not jobbing journalists, get to enter the gates of heaven.

Its 7th Century saint founded Lastingham Abbey in North Yorkshire and became bishop of the East Saxons, its own bishop is a former curator of Castle Howard who himself nourishes a fair old tale.

It is naught, however, to that of Les Barras - known within the Church as Deacon Lazarus, principally because he pretty near rose from the dead.

We attended on the Feast of the Transfiguration: now, as those first Christians might at the time have observed, for something completely different... Lazarus was a Metropolitan mounted policeman - "stoned and spat at for a living" - returned north, became a travelling chiropodist, began to study the Orthodox church.

Orthodox, says the dictionary, means believing in, or according to, religion's received and established doctrines.

Seeking further information, he went to the library, turned to Yellow Pages, began ("typical man") at the letter Y and discovered under "York" the small, terraced church and monastery house of St Anne in Brownlow Street, one of York's less celebrated thoroughfares.

"Like our Lord and saviour we work outside the city walls," says Bishop Stephen, whose 30 years at Castle Howard ended in shock redundancy.

Stephen, formerly a Church of England reader - an unpaid lay worker - in a rural parish near Helmsley, had met an Orthodox bishop on a train, visited his monastery in France, been attracted (he says) to Orthodoxy's 24 hours a day spirituality.

"I was very happy being a reader. I left loving the Church of England very much indeed" he says.

He became eparch - bishop of the autonomous British province - in 1998, lives a monastic life, is unpaid, has adherents spread very thinly from Peterhead to Bournemouth - "Have vestments will travel" - and describes being consecrated bishop as "the great disaster".

"Financially it's quite expensive and if you don't have an income that can be a problem, but I'm under authority and had to do it." Once a month, usually, he's up to Darlington.

Other clergy have styles like "Hierodeacon" and "Revered Reader"; Helen Brown from Ripon, long a high profile opponent of women priests whilst in the Church of England, is a deaconess.

Others within Orthodoxy, however, have criticised the Celtic Orthodox Church, formed from the British Orthodox Church in 1994. Bishop Stephen declines to enter the argument, cites the scripture about not rendering evil for evil, has a nice line about the Greeks... "Our Lord was born in Bethlehem, a small suburb of Athens."

Lazarus, serving a three-year diaconate, welcomes us warmly on a sunny Sabbath morning.

He is barefoot, familiar to a chiropodist and expected by the church, though the elderly are excused. In 1991 he suffered what may accurately be termed multiple injuries in a car crash, his wife Diane told that if he could survive 24 hours he might just have a chance.

Bishop Stephen, styled His Grace, is no less welcoming. The partition that divides "earth" from "Heaven", he explains, has "royal doors" through which only priests may pass and "deacon's doors" on either side.

"Earth" is perhaps three yards square and rich with icons, has a couple of varnished benches, a lectern and a bishop's chair that might once have been Binns' best. Heaven's glories will shortly be revealed.

The chapel was made possible by a bequest from Lazarus's father, killed in another road accident. His mother had supposed they might spend it on a once-in-a-lifetime family holiday. Lazarus, backed fully by his wife and two sons, thought differently.

The prothesis, a sort of prologue, begins quietly behind the partition at 10 40am, accompanied continually by the rattling chain of the thurible, the instrument from which incense is swung.

Incorrigibly, we are reminded of the forewarning's of Jacob Marley's ghost, before his fearful first appearance.

If Deacon Lazarus is richly robed, the bishop's fabulous apparel - when he emerges - may only be described by the fashion editor of the Church Times and certainly not here. Gardening clothes they're not.

They are solemnly attended by Lazarus's white albed sons, 16-year-old Adam and David, three years younger.

Four others are present - Diane Barras, 78-year-old Wilf Blades and two elderly women friends of the family.

The service proper begins at 11am, the royal doors opened shortly afterwards to reveal an altar illumined by countless candles and attended with great ceremony.

It is a garden shed, remember, and it is altogether incredible.

The liturgy is lengthy, almost entirely in English - a snatch of Latin, a line or two of Greek - and chiefly celebrated whilst standing.

The windowless shed might in another sphere have been a sauna cabin. Though the external door remains open to the elements and to the curious, it quickly becomes clear that this building could fulfil a similar function.

In a short address, Bishop Stephen recalls a conversation with the Queen Mother and, while about it, that he once preached in one of the chapels royal. Whilst a Church of England reader, he is said to have incorporated the Queen Mother's racing colours into an academic hood, though the story is doubtless apocryphal.

The liturgy identifies a Little Entrance, Grand Entrance and Last Entrance, processing conducted anti-clockwise to signify - explains Bishop Stephen - that the service is not in time, but in eternity.

There is much ceremonial, much signing of the cross and in and outing, some candelabra waving but only the liturgical hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, sung unaccompanied. Incense wafts everywhere; even the small congregation is censed, though not - of course - incensed. In truth, they appear enrapt.

The Bishop had baked the eucharistic bread at 5.30 that morning; only Diane joins the altar group for communion.

It ends at 12.30pm, followed by a convivial discussion and by lunch with the Barras family across the back street.

Basically it's their domestic chapel out there, though any interested in Orthodoxy would be as welcomed as we were. For the moment, still breathlessly, nuff Cedd.

l Divine liturgy at the Chapel of St Cedd is usually held on the first Sunday of each month. Deacon Lazarus is on 01325 361311; St Anne's in York on 01904 626599.