Keller instinct

KELLOE is generally pronounced Keller, at least by the locals. It may help explain the headline, if not the 900 words which – fecklessly? fetchingly? – follow it.

It’s a former pit village south-east of Durham, proud of its coal-black past but otherwise best remembered as the birthplace of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the 19th Century poet.

No matter that the Oxford Guide to Literature supposes her longwinded, old EBB certainly had her moments, not least in Sonnets for the Portuguese: “How do I love thee, let me count the ways…?”

We’d last visited the 12th Century church of St Helen in 1996, noted that for the first 40 years of her life Elizabeth Barrett had been “subservient to a father most kindly described as Victorian and more accurately as bonkers,” but that suddenly, inexplicably, she crept out of the house in Wimpole Street to marry her handsome fellow poet Robert Browning.

“No doubt fearing the worst,” the column added, “she then crept back in again.” Later they sloped, eloped, off to Italy, Browning given to calling his bride “my little Portuguesi”

– a curious name for a Keller lass.

A memorial tablet, erected by public subscription, is near the main door of the church. Every year for the past 25, the marvellous Hazel Callan, now 82, has organised an Elizabeth Barrett Browning Day so that the village may remember its heroine.

Hazel, herself a bit of a poet – “I like making things up, I’ve had a couple of poems in the paper” – accepts some of the literary reservations about Elizabeth. “Sometimes it’s quite hard to understand,” she concedes, “but there are some beautiful bits, too.”

Born in nearby Bowburn, she moved to Kelloe to teach – “I often thank God for sending me here. I love it, the people are wonderful” – and has also been St Helen’s organist these past 30 years.

At Easter she’ll retire, for the second time, insists that this time she means it. She’s also talked of calling it a day on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, though that may be less certain.

“She was going to retire last year, and the year before that,” someone says, wholly affectionately.

This year’s pageant, last Saturday of June, will have a Sound of Music theme. “Sound of Music, Kelloe version,”

says Hazel. “It’s always a wonderful day.”

LAST Sunday was another big day for St Helen’s. After almost seven years as Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright was paying his first visit. “I feel quite ashamed, it’s a wonderful little church,” he confesses.

Bishop Tom (as folk call him) has been spending three days in the Sedgefield deanery, promoted as a Signs of Hope weekend. He’s found plenty, he says.

So what did he make of the previous day’s At Your Service column on the Xcel Church in Newton Aycliffe – also within the CofE’s Sedgefield deanery – at which hundreds of young people had jigged, and worshipped, unselfconsciously?

“We can talk to one another,” says Bishop Tom. “It reminds me of the Parable of the Sower. We need their energy, they need our roots.”

It’s also Mothering Sunday, a lovely spring morning – signs of hope, or what? – and a no-less lovely church.

A stone cross near the chancel was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as one of the best pieces of medieval sculpture in the county.

“The jewel in the crown,” the area dean, the Rev Keith Lumsdon, had called it a couple of weeks earlier.

“We were well chuffed about that,”

someone says.

The folk from Coxhoe, the next parish, have also come over for the occasion, warmly welcomed so long as they don’t pinch the seats by the radiators.

Carole Lloyd, Kelloe’s much admired priest-in-charge, is parish priest of Coxhoe and of Chilton, too.

The usual congregation of 30 or so has more than doubled.

The bishop preaches on the Prodigal Son, his theme reconciliation, wonders where the mother was in all that. He also twice describes the Prodigal as a scapegrace, a term which few had previously encountered.

Chambers Dictionary defines “scapegrace” as “a graceless, harebrained fellow”. In 2,000 years of biblical contention, the poor old Prodi