Good vibrations

CROCKFORD’S Clerical Directory is an inchand- a-half thick volume listing all those on these shores ordained to what the Church of England properly calls holy orders. Since it costs £100, the copy on these shelves is 12 years old and, even then, it fell off the back of a library.

It’s timelessly instructive, nonetheless, to ponder how many clerics have singularly appropriate surnames and how few the other sort.

There are, or were in 1998, two Saints but no Sinners. There were two Angels but no Demons, countless Wrights (including the present Bishop of Durham) but no Wrongs.

There were five Lords, doubtless good Lords, a veritable house of Bishops – 23 of them – and a baker’s dozen with the same beneficent surname as the Venerable Kenneth Good, retired Archdeacon of Richmond.

There wasn’t a Badbeggar or a Rapscallion in sight. The unfortunate priest called Deveril, as in rather the Deveril you know, may have changed his name by deed poll.

Last Sunday, at any rate, Archdeacon Good led the service at St Peter’s in Stockton, the parish where he had served his first curacy and where, on Saturday, June 30, 1966, he’d arrived for the new man’s traditional look around.

He didn’t get very far. “Do you mind,” asked the vicar, “if we just sit in my study and watch the World Cup final?”

The column had been to St Peter’s twice previously, the first time in 1995 after an arson attack had devastated the church and its defiant congregation met among the embers.

“The sight was good but the smell was terrible,” observed the then Archdeacon of Auckland.

The second occasion, four years ago, marked the restored church’s 125th anniversary. “The fire gave us a kick up the backside,” organist and director of music George Barber had said, the ever-pernickety column constrained to add that that was if a fire could kick anyone anywhere at all.

The church is lovely, its people smashing, welcoming, resilient.

“You’ve lost weight,” someone says.

It’s St Valentine’s Day; but for the just cause and impediment of the lady back home making lunch, it would be tempting to propose holy wedlock to her.

Return’s real reason, however, is that they’ve a new £60,000 digital organ, replacing the pipe instrument that had served St Peter’s since 1881 – though the Durham diocese insisted that the old pipes remain.

George Barber, like Sherlock Holmes a pipe man, admits to being pleasantly surprised at the replacement.

“To restore the old one would have cost twice as much, and it just wasn’t worthwhile. It had been a faithful servant, I keep on thinking I’m being disloyal to my organ.”

Retired headteacher, organist since 1966 – George remembers that World Cup study leave, too – he launches a robust ore-service voluntary that includes Eternally and Plaisir d’Amour. It sounds very good, sweet Valentine, George clearly enjoying himself. The musical term is giving it what fettle.

The archdeacon, who’d also been vicar of Nunthorpe and now lives nearby in Coulby Newham, likes it, too. “I came here for Faure’s requiem and it was clear the old organ wasn’t coping. I really like this one.”

In his sermon he speaks of the clear-day view from the top of Ormesby bank. “You will see spread out before you all the industrial ugliness of Teesside, its mess of chemical and steelworks and its fingers of steam and smoke of various colours reaching into the sky.”

It’s the image that journalists love to portray, he adds and then – remembering who’s hiding behind a pillar – adds that they’re almost all journalists from the south.

By night, adds Archdeacon Good, the view is wholly different. “From the same spot when the stars are out, you will see almost a fairlyland of lights which illumine the same steelworks.

What a difference; the view is quite beautiful, stunning.”

It was also the Feast of the Transfiguration, not a curate’s egg of a sermon at all.

THE choir’s excellent, the prayers thoughtful – there’s even a prayer for the overworked – the gathering afterwards hugely convivial. John and Kath Wilson, married 52 years, celebrate Valentine’s Day with a kiss for the photographer.

Did he send her a card? “Did he heck,” says Kath.

Did she? “No,” says Kath.

“I have her some flowers, though,”

says John, and they laugh like young lovers.

Archdeacon Good is talking about how the town and the church have changed since England won the World Cup. Stockton started going downhill, he says, from the moment it became part of the old county of Teesside. “I think it suffered very greatly, all the money went to the south side. The development on the south of the High Street was truly terrible, they could never do it now.”

When he came, St Peter’s had three curates – “all from the same college, they just seemed to come endlessly” – and two youth clubs, one with 100 or more members and the other with 30. Now Philip Ashdown, the vicar, has no curates and additional charge of All Saints, Hartburn.

There are no youth clubs, just half a dozen at Sunday School.

As well he might, the archdeacon emeritus sees encouragement, nonetheless. “St Peter’s still has the essential ethos, still has a congregation that listens and that’s quite rare these days.

“People aren’t used to listening, they’re used to watching. There’s still a lot going on at this church, it’s a real pleasure to be here.”