POOR Bartle was a sheep rustler who fleeced one farmer too many. Chased down from the hills, seriously injured as he fled, he was summarily executed by the good folk of West Witton, in Wensleydale.

Though it happened around 500 years ago, the Burning of Bartle is still boisterously - and, it might be said, bibulously - re-enacted every August in a night time procession through the village.

On Penhill Crags, he tore his rags

At Hunter's Thorn he blew his horn,

At Capplebank Stee he brake his knee,

At Grisgill Beck he brake his neck,

At Wadham's End he couldn't fend,

At Grisgill End we'll mak his end,

Shout, boys, shout.

Things again took a lawless turn when John Wesley rode up through Wensleydale in the second half of the eighteenth century, one of the women villagers so enraptured by his rhetoric that she omitted to go home to have her husband's tea on the table.

Furious, the old feller threatened to horse-whip her if she went again. The table once more unfurnished, he set off to remind her of the error of her ways - the horse whip what these days might be termed a facilitator - but was himself won over by Wesley.

Whether he ever did get his tea is, sadly, unrecorded.

By 1813 it seemed more like wild West Witton, the local worthies obliged to take action after "sundry idle and disorderly persons" had "very much" disturbed the peace.

"Various outrages" had wantonly been committed against both inhabitants and travellers "to the great disgrace and discredit of the place" - and Sunday, added a public notice, was the worst day of all.

There were "improper games" and "tippling" at the times of church services. West Witton had had enough.

In future, added the notice, the proper officers would have offenders taken up "to be punished and prosecuted as the law directs". Boys and girls found rambling or playing at service time would be placed in the stocks (that, presumably, being what the law directed).

Times have changed, of course. The anodyne ASBO has replaced the stocks, travellers are usually allowed to have a couple in the Fox and Hounds without fear of outrages, however wanton.

What's not changed is that the young folk don't go to church, their games - proper or otherwise - played largely on a computer.

It was among the reasons that West Witton Methodist Church held its final service last Sunday afternoon - "a joyous and a sad occasion," said Henry Dubois, Wensleydale's minister.

In 1808, the village had 15 Methodists. By 1815, it was on the "Sabbath Day's Plan" for the Middleham and Tanfield circuit, other meetings at such unheard of places as Binsoe and Connlyfoot.

The first chapel was opened in 1829. The congregation quickly having outgrown it, the present building cost £300 in 1842 and was much modernised in 1927. Since then, they reckon, all that's changed is the numbers.

"It used to be really busy, a thriving little place, two services and a Sunday School," recalled Jean Guy, 82. "This is a very sad day, but it's been coming for a while."

The congregation will move in with the folk of St Bartholomew's parish church in the village, a Methodist leading the service once a month. The Methodists' 50-year-old organ will replace the Anglicans' older instrument.

Though the building's future isn't yet decided, it will be yet another Methodist chapel to become a country cottage, or an ornamental candle factory or maybe even a Bart's centre.

At the end there were just seven members - all women, all elderly. Often only four were able to attend.

Last Sunday it was again full, almost precisely full. The column has developed a theory over the years - a sort of cross between Parkinson's Law and the feeding of the five thousand - that however many attend a special church service, there will always be exactly enough seats to accommodate them.

"I knew that one day I would at last be preaching to the masses," said Mr Dubois, the wall clock to his right ticking out the final Methodist hour and then adding 15 minutes uncomplainingly.

They went forward, of course, in faith - "God has led us this far and will lead us into even greater things," said the minister - but in realism, too.

In the matter of realism, and of good sense, it has to be said that the splendid Greta Walker, one of whose forebears had so scandalously failed to provide for her husband's inner needs, offered more practical wisdom on Christian unity than 50 years of committee, conclave and congress.

She is 86, born and raised in West Witton, thinks the bairns are a grand lot these days but just wishes they'd go to church sometimes. Kit Walker, her father, had first preached there in 1908, when he was 19. She remembers choirs and carol singers and concert parties.

"It's not that we haven't the money to keep it on, it just didn't seem right somehow to bring preachers from the top of the dale, maybe for three or four people.

"You have to move with the times, villages this small can't carry two churches. The people who say it's a shame to close the chapel are those who don't go. We may as well put money into St Barthomew's, which is struggling.

"It's still the same God and it's still the same worship. The prayers are similar and nine out of ten hymns are the same. We're not far from one another in distance, and we're not far in outlook, either." Tomorrow, still a Methodist, she'll happily join with the Church of England. In the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, there may be a lesson to be learned in West Witton.