High notes

HIGH House Methodist chapel, Ireshopeburn.

Bank holiday Monday, 3pm. The members of Joyful Noise are arriving for the last leg of their musical tour of Weardale. Though they don’t usually do requests, there’s one today.

It’s a glorious afternoon. Born of bitter – that is to say bitter-cold – experience, the steward’s still been asked to put the heating on.

Joyful Noise sing “West Gallery”

church music, familiar between 1700- 1850. Ilkley Moor Baht ‘at was a West Gallery tune, rustled – appropriately for the dale – for While Shepherds Watched.

On this occasion they’re not wearing period rig. There’s even a chap in saggy shorts. It’s uncertain if Mr Charles Wesley meant his hymns to be sung by a chap in saggy shorts.

Another chap appears to be carrying a stepladder. It’s doubtless a musical stepladder.

High House, opened in 1760, is the oldest Methodist chapel in continuous weekly use – John Wesley visited 13 times – and thus not to be confused with our friends at Newbiggin-in- Teesdale where the chapel, the oldest in constant use, celebrates its 250th anniversary this year.

Once Weardale had 22 Methodist chapels, High House alone with 265 members. Now there are just five chapels.

Joyful Noise have earlier in the day sung at Stanhope, Eastgate and St John’s Chapel. The At Your Service column had written, enthusiastically, about West Gallery singing in 2003 – “the panoply splendid, the singing better still” – supposing Chris Gardner, one of the leaders, to bear a marked resemblance to Johann Sebastian Bach.

Chris is there again, wearing a name badge and a John Barleycorn Tshirt.

“If I can identify with anyone, it’s John Barleycorn,” he says.

Unfortunately the name badge appears not to say Johann Sebastian Bach or even “Johann Sebastian Bach lookalike.” Bach didn’t have a beard, says Chris, who lives at Medomsley, near Consett, and is a lay clerk at Newcastle Cathedral.

The music’s great, the audience seriously disappointing. At one point, perhaps disorientated, a couple with ski poles come in. Maybe they think it’s the YHA.

There are just two congregational songs, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing and And Can It Be?, The first, a sort of Two Way Family Favourites, has been requested by me.

They’re sung, respectively, to the tunes Lyngham and Sagina, though the spelling should be checked after the infamous occasion at new Brancepeth Methodist Church when the At Your Service column supposed a hymn tune to be Blindworm, and not Blaenwern as the Welsh had long imagined it.

It’s brilliant, better yet because Weardale’s accustomed accompaniment on such wondrous days is a symphony for motorbike and sidecar.

Ski poles apart, the walkers disappear – snow off a dyke? – at the first mention of congregational singing.

The tea lady simultaneously emerges from her steaming kitchen, 1,001 tongues now.

After considerable contortions, Chris has assumed the organ stool.

“Why didn’t I take up the Jew’s harp?” he muses, and worries for the rest of the afternoon if the observation’s racist.

The tea goes down well, too. Joyful Noise once more live up to their name.

IRESHOPEBURN’S former manse, built onto the church in 1804, is now the Weardale Museum – “a superlative little place,” says one of the Methodist publications, and so it is.

Among much else there’s a lovely, jolly tapestry depicting the dale’s history, finished in February after three-and-a-half years work by a team of six local women.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was chiefly a lead mining area, much emigration evident – “by the shipload,” says one exhibit – once the work was exhausted. In 1879, 60 people from the Lanehead area alone were on the Margaret Galbraith when she sailed from London to New Zealand. It’s all brought up to date by a section on Eastgate’s egregious cement works, Weardale history gone Blue Circle.

■ The Weardale Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, 2pm to 5pm, from May until September.

Admission £2, concessions 50p.

UNLESS crow-like, the shortest way from Ireshopeburn to Grinton – top end of Weardale to top end of Swaledale – appears to be over the top to Middleton-in-Teesdale, across to Bowes, and up and over the Stang.

We do it via the pub and are late for a concert by the Mandolinquents, neatly named, in Grinton parish church.

It’s part of the many-faceted Swaledale Festival, so successful that a stern notice on the church gate warns that anyone leaving items on the pews in an attempt to reserve seats will have the items, aforesaid, removed by a steward.

Though they’re warmly welcoming, all that’s left is what football clubs call restricted view seating, a euphemism meaning “stuck behind a damn great pillar”.

Chiefly mandolinists, the group has a three-times British banjo champion among its ranks – a man who tells what may be the only known joke involving a banjo player and a chip shop.

They’re polished, accomplished, funny. There’s even a song called The Spider in the Shed, not for arachnaphobics, in which “lunch” rhymes with “crunch”.

It ends at 10.20pm. Out the back – in the graveyard, in the gloaming – a chap’s gently digging. It is to be the last part of an eclectic day’s entertainment.

GRINTON church has bats, and not just in the belfry. “You wouldn’t exactly call them house trained,” says Caroline Hewlett, the vicar – cheerfully enough, though it’s possible to suppose that of all God’s creatures, bats may not be her favourites.

There are brown long-eared bats, pipistrelles – pips to their friends – and soprano pipistrelles. There are even thought to be natterers though, fly-by-nights, it’s a bit hard to tell.

Like the ubiquitous great-crested newt, they’re a protected species.

“We’re told they can get through gaps just 10mm wide, there’s not a lot we can do to stop them,” says Caroline.

“We could try rehousing them in bat boxes nearby, but even then the boxes have to be heated. They’re used to a plush lifestyle.”

Nature’s way, someone’s come up with the idea of a bat concerto, a bit like the BBC’s radiophonic workshop – remember the Dr Who theme? – or Rolf Harris tying his kangaroo down, only with a dozen echo chambers.

“It’s a bit wacky,” admits Swaledale Festival artistic director Malcolm Creese. “You can stage the Northern Sinfonia anywhere, but you can only do this in Grinton churchyard.”

Called Echolocation, it’s orchestrated – as it were – by Robert Jarvis, an award-winning composer of such things. Usually unheard, the creatures’ sounds are picked up by bat detectors, like something from Gotham City, then ultrasonically and electronically converted.

The nerve centre appears to be a tent in the graveyard – a bit like those which may be used by Home Office pathologists – filled with computer equipment, a table lamp and a halffinished pint of beer. It’s impossible to ascertain if the beer’s integral to the performance.

By 10.30pm, around 100 people are hanging around the churchyard, uncertain what they’re listening for.

The Reeth police may have an ear cocked, too.

“They go on all night, like teenagers,” says Robert, supposing that by rights half his fee should go to the bats. At one point it sounds like a pipistrelle Pinky and Perky.

By 11pm, however, his audience is drifting away. When a chap starts talking about the aesthetics of the thing, it’s clearly time for bed.

As Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, WA Mozart probably did it better. As music to succour the spirit, it’ll never compete with O For a Thousand Tongues.

A patient man

BILL Shuttleworth, a greatly- loved village GP of the old medical school, has died. He was 93 – “one of those doctors whose door you could knock on 24 hours a day,” says Dale Daniel, an appreciative former patient.

Dale recalls a brown bottle for coughs, white bottle for stomach problems. It’s possible the doc was a little more sophisticated.

Dr Shuttleworth – christened Herbert John, forever Bill – practised in Witton Park, the still-celebrated former Category D village near Bishop Auckland, before retiring to West Burton, in Wensleydale.

When West Burton was merely his holiday home, he and his wife Eileen would sing in Aysgarth parish church choir on Sunday mornings and be back in Witton Park’s more urban environment in time for evensong.

They’d met while doctor and nurse in Liverpool, the two not supposed to fraternise.

Dr Shuttleworth was also a keen motorist and angler, part of his 90th birthday present a fishing trip in the Lake District. “Two strong men lift me into the boat,” he said. “I can steer it where I want and fish to my heart’s content.”

Though Dale Daniel recalls a legendary figure, the GP newly out of the Medical Corps had first to persuade Witton Park’s mothers that the best medicine wasn’t to threaten recalcitrant offspring that the doctor would take them away if they didn’t behave.

“He just wanted to gain their confidence.

He was brilliant with kids, though it was always better to hide your comics when he was coming. If he got to the comics first, he’d probably forget about the patient.”

Forever on call, he recalled only one occasion, the Asian flu epidemic in the 1950s, when he was unable to cope. “There were 76 house calls after evening surgery, not even Doc Shuttleworth could do that,” says Dale. “He had to send to Bishop for reinforcements.”

The doctor also told of the time when the village polliss brought in a chap with a serious scalp wound, for Witton Park had its moments. It was while he was stitching it that the squeamish policeman keeled over, too. Dr Shuttleworth had two patients on his hands.

From a long-lived and ever-musical family, he had recently celebrated 65 years of marriage.

His funeral was at Aysgarth parish church last Friday. “Quite simply it was an honour just to have been treated by him,” says Dale. “He wanted to be liked and he ended up being loved. Nowt was ever a trouble to Doc Shuttleworth.”

BARELY two weeks now to the big anniversary reunion of former Shildon Wagon Works men – the railway engineering works, a basket in which most of Shildon’s eggs were contained, closed on June 29, 1984, with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. “Already more than 200 are coming, men from all over Britain,” reports organiser Alan Robson. The do’s at Shildon Railway Institute from 7.30pm on Friday, June 12. Alan’s on 07980-188683.

TONIGHT at 7pm I shall be opening the flower festival at Crook parish church – St Catherine’s, she of the wheel – just off the market place. It sounds simply magnificent.

The theme, Reflections, is based around the church’s windows. “We wanted something that was unique to St Catherine’s,” says Christine Carroll, one of the organisers.

There’ll be displays on behalf of the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, sundry saints, even a “children’s” window with a teddy bears’ picnic theme.

The only non-coloured window will be garlanded in honour of the church’s coffee makers.

Tonight’s preview, including finger buffet and wine, is £5. Thereafter, admission £3 – in aid of church funds – St Catherine’s will be open tomorrow and Saturday from 10am to 4pm and 1pm to 5pm on Sunday.

The Lantones give a barber shop concert on Saturday at 7.30pm. The Bishop of Durham preaches on Sunday at six. The bishop comes free.

…and finally, an hors d’oeuvres to next Tuesday’s Eating Owt column, which is going to be very enthusiastic about the Ship Inn at Middlestone Village, particularly since Tony Langdale hasn’t increased beer prices since he arrived three years ago. Most are still £2 a pint.

This weekend – Friday to Sunday, all day – there’s a beer festival with at least 22 real ales. Middlestone, not to be confused with Middlestone Moor, is about a mile south-west of Kirk Merrington, in south-west Durham. It’s a hugely welcoming pub, and very highly recommended.