A reluctant goodbye

THE Reverend Enos Fenton was not over fussed, history records, when asked in 1882 to become the first vicar of Tudhoe Grange, Spennymoor. In truth, he appeared positively horrified. He was a curate at the monastic church in Jarrow, secure on £135 a year, when the Bishop of Durham wrote asking him to consider the move south - with the incentive (if that be the word) of an extra tenner a year for his uprooting.

Spennymoor, for all that, may hardly have been considered advancement.

The proposed St Andrew's church would sit among the teeming terraces, blasting furnaces and choking chimneys of the Weardale Iron and Steel Company, a dozen collieries as near neighbours and sickness and poverty endemic.

The town had the highest infant mortality in England, even the poor bairns' clothes regularly pawned in an attempt to make ends meet - or to pay for the next drink in the dozens of back street boozers.

The sewage system is described as "a nightmare of filth and corruption". Many miserable mothers, it's said, would eat or drink opium, too.

As late as 1901, nine-tenths of deaths were uncertified because the unfortunate deceased had been treated by an unqualified practitioner.

It was against that background that Fenton, described in the parish history as "reluctant" but obedient to his bishop, arrived "in fear and trembling" at Tudhoe Grange. Within a year, and for £3,000, the church was built.

Eight decades later, 1968, the Reverend Neville Baker was no less reluctant - that's also in the parish's centenary history and he should know because he wrote it - when offered Tudhoe Grange by the Archbishop of York.

The living had long been vacant, the vicarage abandoned, the congregation down to single figures, the treasurer acting also as boilerman, sexton and sidesman. However paraphrased, his reply to the archbishop was biblically, filially, familiar. "Not my will, but yours...."

Neville Baker was born in Sunderland on Christmas Eve 1935 - "My mother said it spoiled her Christmas; it's spoiled mine ever since" - spent nine years as a merchant navy officer before studying for ordination. He'd been a curate at Hartlepool and at Houghton-le-Spring before being asked to turn the Tudhoe cheek.

"How on earth will we get out of this mess," one of those he calls the "faithful remnant" had asked in his first weeks. Neville was ready for it.

"You have for almost 60 years affirmed twice every Sunday in the Creed that you believe in God, maker of heaven and earth," he said.

"If this God has created the universe, surely he can change one parish?"

Thirty nine years later, Canon Baker held his farewell service at St Andrew's on Sunday evening - and still not even the longest serving parish priest in the Durham diocese.

Edward Underhill, now 83, has been at Low Fell since 1957. John Ruscoe, 75, vicar of South Hylton, Sunderland, since 1965. "I'm just the bronze medallist," said Neville.

Iron works and the consequent coke ovens have long burned out, the last pits worked out, Courtaulds spun off in some other direction. Knock 'em up and knock 'em down, the 1,000-home Bessemer Park housing estate - hopeless, hideous, Bessemer Park - has quickly vanished, too.

"Time is clearly showing that change is not always for the better," wrote Canon Baker in his last parish magazine.

"How far we have progressed together in the last 39 years is at the moment hidden and perhaps in the wisdom of God, this is just as well."

What may most significantly have changed the Church of England was the decision in 1994 to ordain women priests, prompting the folk of St Andrew's, guided by their vicar, to loosen ties with Durham and seek "alternative episcopal oversight" from the "flying" bishop of Beverley.

It's part of the continuing conflict, very broadly, between "traditionalists" and "liberals", though Canon Baker puts it differently in his farewell sermon.

"It raises the question for the Church of England of whether it is Catholic and reformed or plastic and deformed," he says and afterwards insists that the quote is as original as it is memorable.

The sermon also refers to falling standards. "The church hasn't got the kids, so the future of the nation lies, like it or not, with schools and teachers. No wonder they're stressed."

The prayers talk of anxieties, frustrations and disappointments but include a prayer for church unity. Hymns include Through All the Changing Scenes of Life and Who Would True Valour See.

We also recite the familiar words of the Nunc Dimittis: "Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."

The living has been suspended for five years, services to be taken chiefly by Canon Arthur Middleton, a retired priest from Sherburn, who has warned of trying times ahead. "I hope that, unlike the Israelites, you will not murmur in your tents," he wrote in the magazine.

Car parks and church overflow - "Eeeh," says the lady next but one, "I wish we had this many every Sunday" - and afterwards there's a Brobdignadian bun fight and presentation.

"An awful lot of people would never have come to church but for Neville," says Rita Patchett, one of the churchwardens.

"St Andrew's is going to be at a loss without Neville. It's a great testament to him that we're all here tonight," says Alisdair Gillespie, a server and a solicitor. His speech, he says, will be quite short. "Being a lawyer, I charge by the word."

His wife Jean affectionately in attendance, Neville thanks them for their friendship and for their faithfulness. "Jesus is Lord of your life," he says. "Hang onto that despite the Church of England and you'll be all right."

However reluctantly, they are the final, formal words to his 40-year flock.