THOSE young American guys with smart suits, white shirts and Lord-above leaflets must have been knocking about longer than might have been supposed.

In the 1850s they found Faceby, which many might struggle to do 160 years later, and with quite remarkable effect.

Faceby’s a hamlet somewhere near Stokesley, in North Yorkshire, said in the 1851 census to have 32 houses – two of them unoccupied – and about 140 folk. By 1855, there were 29 fewer.

At the top of the village, the parish church is reckoned in one account to have become “increasingly dilapidated” and in another to be a “small, plain, unpretending edifice”. Clearly it was struggling.

The History of Cleveland notes that the curate from 1770-1815 had been “poor drunken Deeson”, who appears to have done little to arrest the decline. The little village on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors was fertile territory for the Mormons.

Many residents were from the Stanger, Hogg and Etherington families, churchwarden John Etherington among those converted and baptised, it’s believed, in Faceby Beck.

“It took all our spare means to buy tracts and feed and clothe the travelling elders, many of whom came among us,” wrote Charles Hogg in 1852.

By 1852 the village had 16 registered converts and a representative at the Newcastle conference, apparently undeterred – though there is nothing to suggest they were encouraged – by the previous year’s declaration legitimising polygamy.

Faceby and the Mormons appeared, in any case, to be a marriage made in heaven. In 1855, 29 villagers set sail for a new life in Utah, where they settled in Ogden City and – as might be supposed of a polygamous people – they multiplied. With the church’s more formal title in mind, they became known as the Faceby Saints.

Faceby church, in altogether better fettle these days, is dedicated to St Mary Magdalene – a relatively rare dedication, it’s said, because the Victorians disapproved of poor Mary – and in particular, shall we say, of her reputed profession, trade or calling.

Serendipitously, it’s in the middle of the fifth of 44 12-mile sponsored stages of my Last Legs Challenge – of which Backtrack readers know more – and which is proving a journey of joyous discovery.

It’s Saturday morning, the little church history – seek and ye shall find – alluding to the former day fun-and-games and the internet, of course, adding grist.

The nice lady cleaning the church says she’s a bit worried about the mice coming back and nothing to do with the abundance of little motifs on Mr Robert Thompson’s woodwork. “They’re all right so long as they don’t start eating the hymn books,” she says, and may have little cause for alarm. It’s when they start baptising folk in the beck that Faceby may really need to worry.

The Northern Echo: Aycliffe Church
LOVELY: St Andrew's Church, in Aycliffe Village

STILL with matters ecclesiastical, a newly-published Visit England survey reveals that the country’s fourth least visited attraction is St Andrew’s Church in County Durham – 105 during 2013, it’s said.

Since it’s possible to think of at least five churches dedicated to St Andrew in the south of the county alone, it takes a little detective work to fathom that they mean the church in Aycliffe Village – home to a couple of Saxon crosses.

Sadly, our attempts to boost numbers have proved fruitless. On the first Sunday lunchtime visit, there appeared to be a baptism in progress; on the second, exactly a week later, the gates were padlocked.

“You can’t blame them these days,” said a chap tidying the churchyard and, of course, it is the great dilemma.

The top free attraction was the British Museum, with 6.7 million, followed by the National Gallery (six million) and Tate Modern (4.8 million). In the North-East, Durham Cathedral had 712,000 visitors annually, followed by the Baltic in Gateshead (529,000) and the Great North Museum in Newcastle (421,000).

Somewhat surprisingly, Locomotion in Shildon was just sixth, with 183,000.

The Tower of London was the top paid-for attraction, St Paul’s Cathedral third and Flamingoland, in North Yorkshire, fifth.

Both for cruciphiles and cross-purposeful, St Andrew’s in Aycliffe is a lovely little place. From September 11-13 the church stages a three-day flower festival of bouquets and bridal dresses, the preview on the Friday evening. Unavailable, I’ve reluctantly had to decline the invitation to open it – it may be the best reason of all to attend.

NEWS of former US president Jimmy Carter’s illness reminds ex-Echo photographer Ian Wright not just of Carter’s fabled visit to Newcastle – “Ha’way the lads,” and all that – but of his own visit to the White House later in 1977. By then in the Sunday Times New York bureau, Ian and a team – “lighting crew, make-up artist, hair stylist” – were on a day-long mission to photograph the hierarchy.

Needing the loo – “as you do on such occasions” – he found himself in a magnificent room complete with liveried attendant, floor to ceiling Italian green marble and “a regiment of bottles of smellies”.

From one cubicle emerged 6ft 6in White House press secretary Jody Powell and from another, Carter himself. Photographer and president shook hands warmly – “only after we’d washed them first” – before adjourning to Oval Office and Rose Garden.

Carter then handed over a boxed set of cufflinks and a framed photograph, signed for Ian’s mum, Nora, back home in Darlington. “She kept it on her bedside table for the rest of her life.”

Now in Las Vegas, Ian himself returns to the Darlington vernacular. “And all this in the White House bog.”

...And finally, today’s column was started so, as Mr Gascogine used almost to say, it had best be finished. There’s been an unexpected hiatus, however: last Tuesday I broke my arm.

It takes us back to Last Legs, mentioned above. Walking to Alnwick past RAF Boulmer – a lovely, all’s-right-with-the-world sort of a day – I noticed a relatively high kerb, but failed to spot the little hump of a ramp that had been built in front of it.

Rhythm interrupted, headlong fall, left hand out to break it – you get the painful picture, anyway.

The fracture clinic at Darlington Memorial seems to think it’s a case of summat and nowt, which may not be the precise medical term, but will suffice. It’s to be hoped these columns can continue uninterrupted save by annual leave. It’s what’s called giving a sucker an even break.