Pie and peace

CHRISTMAS is coming, time for the Coffee and Carols service – a festive treat, an annual indulgence – at Newbiggin-in-Teesdale Methodist chapel. Firstly, however, an unresolved mystery.

Newbiggin’s an endearing little place between Middleton-in-Teesdale and High Force, the enveloping fields still green and white, chimneys smoking briskly, even at 10am.

Amid the usual cornucopia on the village hall noticeboard there’s a printed injunction, short and to the point. “Say No to Article Four,” it insists.

Clause Four, of course, was the hallowed shibboleth to which old Labour was conjoined, but what on earth is Article Four and why should Newbiggin so unequivocally reject it?

Since it’s Christmas we ask the Wise Men. None knows, not even the Reverend Keith Pearce, the minister, nor June Luckhurst, the chapel steward.

Rarely may there have been a more indefinite article. Four auld lang syne, someone’s going to have to explain.

NEWBIGGIN is the world’s oldest Methodist chapel in continuous use.

A board outside dates it to 1759, the cost of land £5 and of building £61 13s 5d. John Wesley visited several times.

On June 2, 1772, his diary noted that he had ridden to New Orygan – the same place, it’s believed – where he found the folk “deeply attentive but not, I think, deeply affected”.

Thereafter he crossed an “enormous mountain”, by which he meant the track up and over into Weardale, and liked what he saw.

“A lovely prospect,” wrote Wesley.

“There are innumerable little houses, three in four of which (if not nine in ten) have sprung up since the Methodists came hither.

“Since that time, the beasts have turned into men and the wilderness into a fruitful field.”

Weardale, of course, is still very much the same.

WESLEY’S diary from those days also recorded his surprise at reaching his 71st birthday in such good fettle – he put much of it down to rising at 4am – and that he’d visited Darlington, than which no place in England was more lively.

He also records a visit in 1780 to the Bishop of Durham’s castle, by which he must have meant Auckland Castle, but left with mixed feelings.

“The situation is very fine and many of the apartments are splendid, but the furnishings are mean beyond imagination.

“I know not when I have seen such a gentleman’s house, for a man on 500 a year, except for the Lord Lieutenant’s in Dublin.”

Though he didn’t identify them, Wesley had clearly also been shown the Zurbaran paintings – bought for Auckland Castle by Bishop Richard Trevor 24 years earlier, presently at the centre of much controversy – and thought precious little of those either.

Particularly he was scathing of the portrait of Jacob as an old man, leaning on a stick. “He looks like a chimney sweep,” said Wesley.

Do the Church Commissioners know this?

THE Newbiggin service is usually the first Tuesday morning in December, postponed because of the weather for the first time in 20 years.

A week closer to Christmas, June hands over a festively wrapped jar of home-made marmalade. “Bribery and corruption,” she says, though there’s nothing in the commandments (or in the code of conduct) about marmalade.

There are to be 12 carols, each requested like something from Two Way Family Favourites, possible to list them all because they’ve just taken delivery of numbers boards – and other gifts – from the recently closed chapel at Woodland.

It’s all wonderfully traditional.

Even the families – the Bayleses and the Bainbridges, the Bells and the Tallentires – appear to have been up there since the incarnation.

There’s a contribution by a quartet from Middleton Male Voice Choir – it turns out that there are three of them – and a monologue by Ruth Dent, great guardian of the Teesdale dialect.

This one’s borrowed, she says, from an elderly gentleman in Pocklington, the story of the Magi in Yorkshire dialect. Scott Dobson essayed a Geordie version, memory suggests, though it may not have been as memorable.

By this account, the shepherds were urged “D’yent fret thissens”, the Wise Men came from Leyton Orient and the one who could interpret the stars was called ’Orace. ’Orace Cope.

Herod telling them to go to the privy may have lost something in the translation, however.

Ruth’s brilliant, roundly applauded.

It’s a good thing it was formerly a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, says an old lad behind. The Primitives didn’t hold wi’ clapping at all.

CAROLS range from Bleak Mid-Winter to Summer Skies A-glowing – another Newbiggin tradition, a reminder that they have sunny Christmases in Australia.

Mr Pearce warms us nicely, at one point suggesting that “a little jiggling”

might be in order but by the time “Come and Join the Celebration”

comes round altogether less reserved.

“Let’s rip,” he says.

Throughout it, a great non-conformist conveyor belt of mince pies, cheese scones, coffee and homemade biscuits is constantly sustained from the kitchen at the back.

Mr Boulton, the photographer, is utterly enthralled – “they don’t write press releases about this sort of thing,” he says – though when he disappears for ten minutes it’s not hard to guess that Mohammed has gone to the mince pie mountain.

It was Wesley himself who famously observed that his heart was strangely warmed, but everyone knows the way to a man’s heart.

Best until last, the final carol of an invigorating morning has been requested – among others – by me. It’s Joy to the World. So be it.

■ The lovely little wayside chapel at Forest-in-Teesdale, above High Force, hosts a Christmas evening with the Shildon Salvation Army Band and Songsters this Saturday at 7pm. Keith Pearce reports that an “incidental note” on the bottom of the poster promises supper thereafter. “I can promise you,” he says, “that supper won’t be incidental at all”.

■ Don’t miss At Your Service on Christmas Eve.

TODAY’S column becomes one long musical interlude. On Saturday evening we attended a splendid organ recital at St Cuthbert’s church in Darlington followed, in a pub 100 yards away, by a gig with Fergal Flaherty. With a name like that, Mr Flaherty was unlikely to be from Merthyr Tydfil.

It was also karaoke night at the Three Crowns, but you just can’t be everywhere, can you?

The recital attracted just 25 people, the weather indicted. Fergal Flaherty’s fantasia drew followers from all over England, a blarney army of groupies and sub-groupies squeezed enthusiastically into the Hole in the Wall.

Who said that Flaherty gets you nowhere?

St Cuthbert’s, as recently we have observed, has a cherished reputation for musical excellence – coruscating choirs and accomplished organists.

Nothing if not eclectic, the vicar also plays the saw and may, we hear, again be cutting his teeth before Christmas.

David Ratnanayagam, since July the organist and director of music, was raised in Sri Lanka, studied in Australia, worked – among other places – in Zambia and is now organ scholar at Durham Cathedral.

He confessed, however, that it was only three years ago that he first heard the infamous old joke about the difference between an organist and a terrorist.

Any other organist jokes? “I think they would be too profane for your newspaper,” he says.

ST Cuthbert’s organ dates back to 1830, is thus getting on a bit and has a problem. As both priest and organist put it, it ails. “I’ve had an ailing organ for ten years,”

said Robert Williamson, the vicar, in the manner of a chronic hepatitis sufferer.

Restoration will cost about £170,000, the first estimate giddyingly higher. Saturday’s recital was intended to raise money towards that end.

“It keeps on going on and off when it shouldn’t, sometimes it disrupts the entire service,” says David.

“Deep in my heart I believe it is a beautiful instrument, nonetheless.”

Those with an ear for such things recognised that he played it wonderfully well – pulled out all the stops, it might almost be said, save that in the organ’s present condition such exuberance is not to be advised.

David’s wife loyally turned the pages. Time was when urchins might get sixpence a week for turning the organist’s music. The rate is unlikely much to have increased.

The parish church hopes for substantial grants, knows that it will have to raise a great deal itself.

“It isn’t just a piece of furniture, it enriches worship and the church wouldn’t be what it is without it,” said David. “An electric organ just wouldn’t be the same at all.”

Most enjoyed a glass of wine at the end. Stronger beer, the column was off to the Hole in the Wall. Save for the lady of this house, none other claimed the double header.

Pipe dreams

THE pub’s run by Phil James.

His brother Greg has had a bar in Tenerife since 1994, though – as recently as Monday, Ashley out – he remains a regular irregular in Hear All Sides.

Greg’s pub’s also called the Hole in the Wall – an example, perhaps, of two halves making a Hole – his business partner, the engaging Mr Flaherty, over for a bi-annual visit to Darlington.

Mind, the weather wasn’t half a contrast.

Minus Tenerife, as someone rather neatly observed.

There was an overnight lady from Dorset, a couple of fellers from Bolton, a late middle-aged and semidelirious delegation from York waving Christmas streamers over their heads.

Someone from Evenwood, too.

His first song was about Friday nights at the Hole in the Wall, the second Christmas in New York.

Rogue Pogues, they were hooked.

When we half expected Paddy McGinty’s Goat he sang Dirty Old Town, though not – of course – in reference to dear old Darlington.

There was even that familiar rugby song that rhymes Silvest and Big Chest, though I still can’t work out what it’s all about.

We left at 11.30, the place lifting.

Irish eyes smiled; the Hole in the Wall cashed in. St Cuthbert’s lay silent but they, at least, would be hitting the high notes again next morning.

SO what of Barbara Law, still remembered as a star of Tyne Tees Television’s One O’clock Show, but for the past 24 years in Tenerife? “Still around, still singing, still fabulous,” says Greg. Just now, however, she’s back in England doing dates with her old friend Ken Dodd – they broke the box office record at Blackpool Opera House with a 24- week run in 1962 – though the nearest’s Bradford. Ken Dodd’s 83, Barbara Law a few years younger.

…and finally back to Cuthbert’s in Darlington, and the Christmas round robin from Janet Chapman, a former curate who’s now at Birmingham Cathedral. Janet records a recently overheard comment: “If Jesus could see what we’d done to Christmas, he’d be turning in his grace.”