Carole singing (From The Northern Echo)

Carole singing

12:11pm Saturday 15th November 2008 in

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The new priest of St Mary’s, Coxhoe, is being spread thinly between three parishes, but she’s relishing the challenge.

COXHOE, thereabouts pronounced as in boxer, had a vicar before ever it had a church. Services were held in a miner’s cottage and, subsequently, at the Temperance Hall.

It couldn’t go on. “The spiritual destitution of the township of Coxhoe has long been known and recognised as a reproach to the Christianity of our bishopric,” observed an account of an 1867 meeting called to put a proper roof over the head of the faithful.

Though the colliery-owning North Eastern Railway refused to help – “as usual”, the report tartly observed – money was raised and a church built within 12 months, consecrated on May 14, 1868, by Charles Baring, the Bishop of Durham.

St Mary’s cost £2,300 and could seat 468 people. Coxhoe was burgeoning; they’d hoped it might be bigger. The need was for more churches, said the bishop, “so that we might retain the beneficial influence on the lower classes of these northern parts.”

Coxhoe, once a colliery community, is four miles south-east of Durham.

Hitherto the parish church had been in Kelloe, a couple of miles further along the road and noted for its links with Elizabeth Barratt Browning, the author.

Kelloe, of course, is properly pronounced Keller.

By the time that the church opened, the vicar was Canon David Fleming, who so greatly liked the place that he stayed for 54 years, dying in 1921, white bearded and 90. He is buried beneath the east window.

Canon Fleming, also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Astronomy – and by no means the only clergyman to gaze earnestly to the heavens – was also assisted by a succession of curates.

They needed curates to carry out the work, Bishop Baring had said, and generations of young clergymen might say Amen to that. Times change.

The parishes of Coxhoe and Kelloe have shared a priest for the past 25 years or so. Until the Rev Carole Lloyd was licensed at St Mary’s on Tuesday evening, there’d not been an incumbent for two years. The gap between her predecessor and the chap before that was six-and-a-half years. “I just can’t understand why people seem reluctant to come here,” says Ernie Mayhew, a gentle man who is one of Kelloe’s churchwardens.

The splendid Mrs Lloyd is thus much to be welcomed, but still won’t be able to give the two parishes her undivided attention. She remains priest-in-charge of Chilton – “a great minister,” says one of the Chilton folk. Chilton’s six or seven miles away.

It was the archdeacon’s idea, says Carole – ideas are what those venerable gentlemen are paid for – though she embraces it enthusiastically.

“There are fresh challenges in having churches so far apart, but I’m really looking forward to it. We’ll need to involve lay people, maybe think a bit differently, but it’s not like I’m travelling on horseback.”

She’s off at a gallop, nonetheless.

ST Mary’s is on the main road through the village, the Roman Catholic church opposite and the Methodists a few doors along.

Hardly surprisingly, it’s called Church Street.

Around 150 are present for the licensing, the first of three similar services – the others in Durham – which the present Bishop of Durham will perform on successive nights.

Legally, they may have different descriptions.

Dr Tom Wright, the bishop, talks for simplicity’s sake of “putting them in”.

He’s escorted by no fewer than six churchwardens, each bearing the wand that serves as a badge of office.

Asked later what the collective noun for churchwardens might be, the bishop supposes an organisation – and may have a point – but concedes that a staff of churchwardens is neater.

Eleventh day of the eleventh month, the clergy wear poppies on their clerical scarves. It’s a night to remember, too.

Carole, a good Yorkshire lass with a grown-up son and daughter, is joined by her parents and by Roger, her husband.

“It goes with the calling,” he says, asked what it feels like to have so trinitarian a wife.

The service begins with a welcome from the Rev Keith Lumsdon, the area dean, and with his customary warning to watch out because Mr Amos is about.

Deaf ears, someone asks if we know the new definition of democracy.

“Two lions and a goat arguing over what’s for dinner,” he says.

There’s also a little debate about how properly the village names should be pronounced. Hail Kelloe, well met.

The service incorporates great hymns – Crown Him With Many Crowns, And Can It Be? – the usual legal necessities and a lively sermon from Bishop Tom, who begins by recalling the anticipation when the ageing and generally useless Roman emperor Claudius was to be replaced by a bright, buoyant and much younger man.

“This is, of course, very different from any recent events in the western world,” he says. The new guy’s name was Nero.

The bishop also calls for greater church unity, a theme not echoed by Bishop Baring, who seemed to blame the dissenting Methodists for many of Coxhoe’s problems.

“Wherever there is something that can be prised apart, be sure that someone will be there to exploit it,”

Bishop Tom adds.

Carole takes the oaths, accepts the formal gifts – water, oil, a bible – says that already she feels Coxhoe and Kelloe to be very welcoming.

Ernie Mayhew’s no less enthusiastic.

“We’ve met her and she seems lovely. She’s talking of family services, getting around the schools, reaching the children. We haven’t done that for ages.”

He’s been churchwarden for 17 years. “I had cancer,” he says, “all my stomach removed, spleen too. I though that if the Lord got me through that, I should give some time to the church.

The cure appears lasting. “Just now I’m on painting the gutters,” he adds.

Afterwards there’s a spread to feed the five thousand, a chance to meet the new priest-in-charge, photographs with the beaming bishop.

Carole will take two services every Sunday morning, but arrange for help with the third. “The communities seem very similar to Chilton and I love it there,” she says and takes fresh guard, vigorously put in to bat.