Showing Willington

No matter that the cut became a sustained assault – the scissors’ fault; you know what they say about bad workmen – it’s a remarkable, even visionary, development.

The ceremony coincided with the parent and toddler group. Usually they throw bread buns when I speak; this time they threw plastic toys.

When originally opened in 1914 – J C Straker, says the foundation stone – it was an Assemblies of God church. Gradually the Assembly dwindled and died.

At the end, unable even to afford the heating, they met in someone’s front room.

For four years the church stood empty, semi-derelict, until given to the Wear Valley Christian Centre, based in Bishop Auckland. It’s led by the Reverend David Parry, whose parents had been missionaries in China, Tibet, Nigeria and Bishop.

David did his A-levels at King James I school, worked in the church, returned eight years ago. “I feel I was called,” he said.

The Willington building couldn’t continue as it was. The organ was sold to a factory owner in Shildon who (it’s said) has installed it in the workplace; the pulpit went on eBay to a bridal shop in Leeds.

“They said it was just their sort of thing,” said David.

Grants and gifts have totalled £175,000. The floor, which sloped 8ft, has been realigned, the place transformed.

It’s all on the level now, all that they say about phoenix and ashes.

Much of the seating has come from a recently closed Methodist church in nearby Sunnybrow, not least thanks to Willington mayor Brian Myers, who was a steward there.

For now it’ll just be a base for community activity, even Slimming World. In the autumn they plan an Alpha course, and fortnightly Sunday evening services.

This time, of course, there wasn’t a foundation stone. Ninety-seven years too late for that and perhaps just as well. You know what they say about he who is without sin, an’ all.

IDRIS Parry, David’s dad, was minister in the late 1960s of the Pentecostal church in South Church Lane, Bishop Auckland. Probably the only time I was there was for a talk by David Wilkerson, a renowned American evangelist best remembered for his book The Cross and the Switchblade.

Wilkerson died last month in a car crash, his Church Times obituary recalling his life-changing decision to minister to the violent youth gangs of New York.

“You really feel that this is where the Holy Spirit is leading you?” his wife asked?

“Yes, I do, honey,” said Wilkerson.

“Well,” she said, “be sure to take some good warm socks.”

SAD to learn of the death of Margaret Anderson, a former Mayoress of Durham and a sergeant, ever-helpful to young reporters, in Durham Constabulary.

Back in the long-gone days when female police officers were sometimes shielded from less physically demanding duties, she headed the women’s section in Spennymoor and Bishop Auckland.

Margaret, a faithful Methodist, was also secretary of Croxdale Women’s Institute. One night they invited me to speak, a group meeting or something.

Memory suggests both a terrific spread and a bottle of whisky thereafter.

“I wouldn’t normally touch the stuff, but I know that you do,” said the magnificent Margaret. It went down very well.

SOMEWHERE amid all the recent talk about the oldest profession, sparked by a talk in Middleham, last week’s column supposed that the nursery rhyme Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie may have been a reference to George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham (a man of many tarts).

Terry Schofield, in Billingham, thought it pie in the sky. Wasn’t the cad who kissed the girls and made them cry meant to have been George IV, he asks?

“Evidently there was a banquet in his honour, his girth measured the same as his height – hence pudding and pie – and after the meal the gentlemen retired to smoke or drink or gamble. George stayed with the ladies and insisted on kissing each one, much to their distress.”

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes reckons the rhyme to have been around since at least the mid- 19th Century – George Bernard Shaw knew it as a child – and notes theories about both Georges and also about Charles II.

There is no evidence, it adds, to corroborate any of them.

CLEARLY the Villiers family was everywhere. Former Northern Echo reporter Michael Clark, now a Stockton councillor, recalls a “character” called Jeremy Villiers who in the 1980s tried to pass himself off as a journalist. It ended one evening at the speedway when, despite brandishing a press card, Villiers was unceremoniously ejected. That the press card was on the back of a bit of cornflakes packet may or may not have had something to do with it.

…and finally, news of Sixties singer Kathy Kirby’s death last week recalled a conversation several years ago with Margaret Sparks, then landlady of the Three Horse Shoes, in Wensley.

Margaret was particularly fond of Fifties and Sixties music, played it frequently.

Her mother’s favourite 45 had been Kathy Kirby singing Secret Love, so probably it didn’t go down terribly well when Margaret made it into a plant pot. “She didn’t speak to me for a week,” she said (and now it’s no secret any more.)