The clan of the county

He is 59, and quoted (more or less) Winston Churchill. "All my past life has been but a preparation for this hour."

It was the latest chapter in a quite extraordinary family story which could in turn overflow these pages, but must perforce be close confined.

So to begin, as should most of the best narratives, at the beginning.

John McManners, whose father had sailed from Ireland to Scotland in the 1860s - perhaps the potato famine, perhaps the loom weavers riots - moved to the Willington area of County Durham around ten years later and worked, almost inevitably, at the colliery.

On December 22, 1877 at Bishop Auckland register office John, aged 22, married 17-year-old Jane Cardwell. They moved to Newfield, three miles west of Bishop, and had "at least" 13 children, of whom 11 survived.

That coal hewn union began a dynasty which spanned great cultures of music, medicine and the military, of education, sport and the church and which includes the first Commando to land on the Falklands and now 12-year-old Joseph McManners, who could become the best known - and the wealthiest - of all.

Young Joe, chosen from 25,000 applicants to play the Little Prince on BBC2 last Christmas, has now signed a reputed £2m contract for an album called In Dreams, to be released on December 5. New meaning to treble chance.

The McManners clan, said the Rev Harry Lee in this column nine months ago, was "one of the great families of County Durham". It was almost an understatement.

Harry had been taught at Stockton Grammar School by Tom McManners, known to sing his history lessons (and, it's recalled, who sang the speech when giving away his daughter).

An Edwardian McManners was even said to be the inspiration behind the global success of Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, but that's doubtless another story.

John, back in Newfield, helped fight for compensation for injury victims and to form the first miners' union and was sacked for his efforts. It helped form a thick seamed family ethos - "socialism as it was originally," says Dr Bob McManners.

John - "clever, handsome and affable" says a family history - built houses and took on the Queens Head in Newfield, prospered but began to drink the profits. The family moved to Ferryhill, and remained deep rooted there.

Tom, their eldest son, was injured down the pit and killed in 1933 when crossing the Great North Road to Ferryhill Athletic football ground, a club he avidly supported. His wife Florrie ran a sweet shop, bred Dalmatians out the back, became a Labour member of Durham County Council.

"One of the very first women to be taken seriously in politics, when the women's branch were supposed to be making the tea," says the family history.

Jim and John, their sons, both became headmasters - John in Norton, North Yorkshire, Jim in East Howle and Chilton, both near Ferryhill.

Jim and Winifred McManners in turn had three sons - John, around whom Sunday's service revolved, Jim and Bob.

All three sang in the choir at St Luke's in Ferryhill, where their great uncle Joe was Vicar - great uncle Jack, another self-educated miner, was Vicar of St Cuthbert's, Darlington - and all three had schools rugby trials for England.

Jim, 58, is the pioneering and energy conscious head of Cassop school near Durham, keeps sheep and was awarded the OBE in the New Year honours; his wife's a solicitor in Ferryhill.

Bob's a GP in Bishop Auckland, accomplished artist, zealous campaigner for local causes and founder of the Campaign for Real and Proper Puddings, an acronym best left to the imagination but the stealthy spoon stirrer (he supposes) in roly poly's recent resurgence.

His wife Stefa ("one F in Stefa," she says, mischievously) is head of St Joseph's RC school in Coundon.

John, the eldest, won the county schools 880 yards by the length of Ferryhill market place, studied law, helped his father keep racehorses - they had four winners - and became an expert on blood lines, chiefly equine.

He played rugby for London Irish, became advertisement manager of the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle, ran youth projects at St Nicholas's church in Durham with his wife Gina and in 2002, became the third John McManners to be ordained priest in Durham Cathedral.

For four years he was curate at Monkwearmouth, across Sunderland. His new church, built in 1912, stands opposite the Royal Hospital on one corner and the Methodists on another. Next door is the Community Outreach Centre, formerly the parish hall.

The service was led by Dr Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, and videoed for John's mum, who's 93 and in a rest home in Bishop Auckland.

The bishop had been taught at Oxford by Jack McManners, professor of ecclesiastical history and former pupil at Dean Bank council school in Ferryhill. ("A hell hole," he once recalled.)

Bishop Tom delivered an admirable but ever-accelerating sermon, as if late for evensong or running a shorthand test at 150wpm, thus finding the attendant scribe much behind himself.

When first he came, Bishop Tom would hand over a copy of the day's sermon. It is a practice much to be encouraged.

Legal niceties complete, section 97 of something or other duly suspended, the new priest-in-charge talked of how he and Gina hoped to work as a team and of how grateful he was for the welcome.

"I can feel waves of goodwill coming in my direction. They're almost tangible," he said.

By following the signs to Slimming World (honest) we were then able to locate a vast repast in the Community Outreach Centre (nee church hall), though whether prepared by the women's branch it is impossible to say.

It's a large inner-city parish, in terms of experience - and to return to football - a bit like appointing a chap to manage Sunderland after three years at Hartlepool Reserves.

None doubts that St Gabriel's has been left in a hugely safe pair of hands. McManners maketh man.

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