The sun may not quite make it, but Easter morning rises as always to the occasion

USUALLY beneath the headline “Risen indeed”, or else “Early to rise”, it has become customary these past 16 years for the column joyously to greet Easter at what with eternal optimism is called a Sunrise Service.

Last week’s Church Times came up with the headline Risen in Leeds, so pleased with it that it held the front page. I meant to check what it was all about.

We’ve had a 5am start at Durham Cathedral, bonfire bright blazing in the cloisters and a glorious dawning on the beach at Redcar, when the sun so promptly put its head above the waves that it might have been woken by a solar alarm clock. The photographer still gets excited about that one.

There was another 5am start at a church in the middle of a field – Nether Silton, or somewhere – a bitter- cold beginning around Captain Cook’s monument, Easter enlightening at Black Hambleton, adrift above Osmotherley.

Mostly, however, the dawn chorus has been at the summit of Pen Hill, in Wensleydale – an exercise that the faithful again undertook this year – or atop Middlehope Common, high and wild in Weardale.

Usually it has been accompanied by a rousing resurrection of Thine be the Glory, the greatest hymn in Christendom.

It was to Weardale that we headed last Sunday – turn right at Ireshopeburn and head for the hills – a moonlit, owl-flying, frosty-field morning quite wonderful in its solitary splendour.

Inevitably there were sheep, too, though it was as if they’d all been camoflauged. “It’s only when a piece of frost moves that you realise,” said the Lady of the House, ever-supportively in attendance.

Over breakfast, hot cross buns and eggs jubilantly jarped, we were also to learn about the man who founded the still-celebrated Bainbridge’s store in Newcastle, but more of him in a moment.

We’re on Middlehope Common by 6 15am, snow still clinging to the tops and beneath the dry stone walls, snowdrops in abundance. The temperature’s dropped to minus two.

The only vehicle is a parked taxi minibus, from which no one’s yet stirred. “I don’t suppose they’ve come for a picnic,” supposes the lady.

At 6.20am we’re joined by Chris Booth, the photographer to whom thanks. “Are you sure you’ve got the right day?” he asks.

“Probably,” I tell him.

THE sky’s lightening, visibility perfect, upper Weardale for once windless. By 6.30 about 15 are present, led by Methodist local preacher Joan Wilkinson and joined by Zaccheus, a chihuahua.

Zaccheus, it will be recalled, was a little feller who couldn’t see Jesus and so shinned up a tree. Trees being in short supply on Middlehope Common, this one pokes a cautious head from a carrying basket, in which he is probably a great deal warmer than the rest of us.

Though raised in a Methodist household, it should be said that the dog is a good ecumenist. He also attends Anglican services in Crook.

Joan hails a “really beautiful morning” and has thoughtfully provided large print orders of service, though the column’s participation is made yet more discordant than usual by what may be termed Whitley Bay croak. Football fans will understand.

It’s a magnificent occasion, for all that, starting with Christ the Lord is Risen Today – one of John Wesley’s – and ending, traditional and triumphant, with Thine be the Glory.

The service is carefully considered, the readings reassuring. “No situation is hopeless, no person so dreadful as to be beyond redemption.”

The sun thinks about it, paints the sky pink, quite excites Mr Booth but is then overtaken by the mist rolling in, just as it did on the Mull of Kintyre but on this occasion from the general direction of Rookhope.

Usually the breakfast has been in Westgate Methodist chapel, down in the valley. Since it’s recently closed, the meal’s moved to Eastgate village hall, a couple of miles further down.

Eastgate’s a hamlet of about 45 people, they reckon. As well as the hall, once the school, it still has both Anglican and Methodist churches, pub and – across the river – a very agreeable hotel. They closed the railway station, though.

The churches were opened at much the same time, 1880s, the Church of England by the Lord Bishop of Adelaide – a bit out of his patch – and described by Pevsner as “handsome, aisleless, neo-Perpendicular.”

The Methodist church is a memorial to Cuthbert Bainbridge, stoutly described as a yeoman farmer, subscribed by his son, Edward Muschamp Bainbridge.

Youngest of seven, Edward left Eastgate at the age of 13 to be apprenticed to a draper in Newcastle, would walk the 30-odd miles home when his seven days annual holiday allowed it, went off to London but at 21 returned to Newcastle to set up in partnership with William Dent in Market Street.

Dent left, Bainbridge’s prospered.

By 1849, it’s claimed, it had become Britain’s first true department store.

Staunchly Methodist, Edward believed in fairness to both staff and customers. Prices were fixed, haggling disallowed. The customary working week, six 15-hour days, would be made more bearable by a night off for “courting” and two if they attended prayer meetings.

Edward died in 1892, the business subsequently run by the family until 1953 when it became part of the John Lewis group. In 1976, the shop moved to Eldon Square, in 2002 finally changed its name to John Lewis.

Folk still call it Bainbridge’s, notwithstanding.

Eastgate folk now congregate on alternate weeks in either church, numbers said rarely to exceed half a dozen except for funerals. “Funerals still lift the place,” says our guide.

It’s s situation that may soon have to be addressed, but not on a glorious Easter morning and not at half past seven.

After a hugely convivial breakfast and a stroll around the village – wide and wonderful waterfall, first friendly fire smoke from stone-built cottages – it’s time to head again down dale. The temperature’s risen to freezing.

It’s 8.30am, Radio 4’s Sunday service from Westminster Cathedral.

They sing Thine be the Glory, too, but nothing may be more glorious than Easter on Middlehope Common, not even with the Whitley Bay croak.