Since its humble beginnings, Corporation Road Baptist Church may have had its share of hardships, but it's still hanging on.

CORPORATION Road Baptist Church celebrated its centenary last Sunday, people - good, zealous, warmly welcoming people - still totally immersed in it.

They looked back nonetheless to the days when three services were necessary to fit everyone in, when the Sunday School had 250 members and 200 marched confidently with the Band of Hope, when it was felt necessary to order 800 more hymn books and the parish magazine raged against the evils of picture palaces and sold 500 copies, nonetheless.

"Ah yes," said one of the deacons at Sunday's service, "would that it were like that today."

The church, in Darlington, held its first services on November 21, 1905, a daughter church - these days it would be called a plant - of the yet more greatly flourishing Baptist church in Grange Road.

That same Edwardian weekend, the Echo reported the death at 43 of the Rev FE Mortimer, vicar of St Cuthbert's in the town, that an 82-year-old Hexham woman had begged the guardians to let her into the workhouse, that 2,500 men and boys were on strike at Murton colliery and that John Collins from Bowes had been fined 2/6d by Greta Bridge magistrates for riding a bicycle without lights.

The constable told the court that he had had to chase the defendant for a mile, helpfully adding that it was dark at the time.

A Shildon man, meanwhile, had been acquitted at Durham Assizes of attempting to murder his wife but immediately re-arrested on the lesser charge of "annoying his wife by putting oxalic acid in the kettle". Things were coming to the boil.

The Baptists had first moved to Corporation Road, off Northgate, in 1897 when a corrugated iron building - perhaps inevitably known as the Tin Hut - had been built for £400. A two bedroomed cottage cost about half as much.

Soon the hut overflowed as railway workers and their families flooded into the area. Five free churches opened in Darlington between 1900-05, John Guthrie and his men spending almost a year in building what the Baptists called the tabernacle.

It cost £4,760, including fittings, hymn books and crockery, the tin hut continuing for other meetings and, in the Second World War, as a billet.

The tabernacle's foundation stone had been laid on November 1, 1904, posters round the town promising a "monster tea" and a "grand public meeting". The opening overflowed. When the first minister left in 1912, another swiftly succeeded.

"No doubt most ministers today would give their right arm to join such a thriving fellowship," noted a church history written in 1997.

The church, like many more, is altogether more handsome within than without. The £113,000 church centre, a 1990 replacement for the tin hut, still hosts everything from keep fit classes for Muslim women to a lunch club and slimming class, one inexorably following t'other.

An average 35 attend morning service, 25 in the evening. There hasn't been a pastor for two years, since the last man lost his voice. Whether or not his voice came back, the pastor didn't.

"It's the same for all the churches around here," says Mavis Curren, one of the deacons. "We can't get ministers to come to the North-East, and Cornwall."

She wouldn't care, adds Mavis, but her hairdresser reckons that Darlington is the geographical centre of Great Britain - thus again proving that you shouldn't believe all you hear in the hairdresser's.

Sunday's service is upbeat and vibrant, centenary balloons tied jauntily to the pillars. A commendable example of user friendliness, at least two of the older folk have easy chairs provided, particularly useful if the preacher proves soporific.

Lily Barker, the still-sprightly oldest member, cuts a cake with 18-month-old Millie Foster, the youngest.

Upstairs, a group for "unchurched" boys is enjoying sausage and bacon sandwiches. There've been up to 14, on Sunday there are three. "They were just hanging around the doors on Sunday mornings so we asked them in," says Herbie McCordick, who's said not to look very much like a deacon but definitely is one, anyway.

"I think a very good sausage and bacon sandwich may have something to do with the attraction," concedes Gillian Fiske, another helper.

The service is led by the Rev Rodney Breckon, whose own church - New Life Baptist in Northallerton - thrives so greatly that they may again have to extend the building.

It's his first visit to Corporation Road. "It seems like everyone and his dog have been here from Northallerton except me," he says.

Mr Breckon preaches about Daniel, who dared, and who didn't let a few setbacks get in his way. A survey the previous day had suggested that 62 per cent of Anglican ministers, 50 per cent of Baptists and 49 per cent of Methodists were shy or introverted.

Rodney Breckon, who sounds a bit like William Hague but may be paid rather less every time he rises to his feet, is definitely not among them.

Helen Warren, the assistant secretary, had forecast that the service would last an hour, a triumph of hope over reality. It lasts 95 minutes. Afterwards over coffee, there's chance to look at the magnificent centenary exhibition, posters about grand limelight lectures and great missionary festivals, pictures of the tabernacle football team, of the Sunday School outing to Gainford and of "Toffee" Alnwick, a deacon particularly loved by younger church members because he had sweet stalls on the market.

Mr Breckon had urged them to look forward to the next 100 years; Mavis Curren had no doubt that they would. "Times have undoubtedly changed, but what hasn't changed is our faith, our fellowship and our hope."

* Sunday services at Corporation Road Baptist Church in Darlington are held at 10.30am and 6pm, all welcome.