THE advertising department will like this bit. Improbable among the steak houses and show houses in our TV and entertainments section 7Days - the other week - was a simply worded ad for something called a "continuing" Anglican church. It worked - a 33 per cent increase almost overnight.

One travels from Hamsterley to Darlington but was ill last Sunday, the other two... well the other two are engaged in what might be termed ecclesiastical moonlighting, still also attending the parish church at home but unsure for how much longer.

"The new vicar's chucking everything out," says the lady of the house. "He's chucked out the Prayer Book, chucked out Hymns Ancient and Modern. He'll be chucking us out next."

It'll be like decimalisation, she adds, change for small change's sake.

The congregation may therefore be 12 on a very good day, but since there's still at least one Anglican priest in Darlington who reckons that the town isn't big enough for both of them, a word of explanation may be necessary.

Part of a worldwide communion, the Traditional Anglican Church was founded in Britain in 1996 as a consequence, they say, of a "breakdown of faith and order" within the established Church of England. Particularly they object to women priests - an "invention", says the TAC - to modern liturgy and to theological liberty.

Some call it a sect, the TAC insists that it is a denomination. Sects is a dirty word when discussing the divided church - but if anything's a breakaway movement, they suggest, it's the Church of England.

"I've never said that we wanted to poach anyone or said a word against any other denomination," says Fr Ian Westby, the priest-in-charge. "There is still one person who clearly doesn't want us here, however, and that makes me quite angry." The one person is Fr Ian Grieves, parish priest of the High Anglican church of St James the Great on Albert Hill, Darlington.

Fr Westby was born in Crook, spent 30 years in the Health Service, began TAC services two and a half years ago amid the Italianate splendour of the chapel at Aske Hall, the Marquess of Zetland's home near Richmond.

The column went to Aske one snowy morning in January 2001, in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. "Who is separated from whom, what is root and what is branch, and if the house is divided against itself then whom should be held contractually responsible remain, of course, matters of unrelenting schism," we wrote.

Fr Westby's second church is in appearance wholly more humble - the former Spiritualist church, now the Church of St Mary the Virgin, in Northgate, Darlington.

Like the 7Days ad, it is surrounded by catering outlets, the detritus of fast food and feckless folk cleaned early each morning from the tiny car park at the front. Fr Westby hopes to win permission to turn it into a gated garden, plans to have a bishop - episcopal oversight is from Canada - consecrate the building next May.

He'd first seen the To Let sign outside the Spiritualist church 18 months ago, inquired about it this Spring, hadn't even realised that it was a church. "It had vestibule, sanctuary, kitchen and loo, what more could you want?" he asks amiably, though what else they wanted cost the unpaid priest £5,000 from his pocket, and from his pension.

The chairs, £1 each, came from the United Reformed Church across the road, one of the two altars is from a church in the Diocese of Durham, the handsome reading desk from "contacts in the antiques world". There are many icons, too.

"I've never known a priest so dedicated in all my life. He's been around sales and auctions all over just to furnish this church," says Robert Frew, who lives at Aske but also attends the Darlington church with his family. The chosen Frew, we suggest.

The appeal, says his wife Jessica - formerly a Church of Scotland member - is chiefly in the use of the Book of Common Prayer, now largely redundant elsewhere. "We do things here as they always used to be done," she says.

The communion service lasts 45 minutes, includes three well known hymns and much once-familiar language and is dedicated to the memory of Soham's two murdered children.

"If you have any prayers in your heart this week, say them for the children of the world and that they may be safe," says Fr Westby.

Middle of the road Church of England, we inquire the permissibility of taking Holy Communion. "My orders are as valid as those of any other Anglican priest," says Fr Westby.

Fr Grieves may argue; the column didn't.

Traditional Anglican Church services are held at Aske Hall at 8.30am and 6pm - when now more than 30 attend - and at Northgate, Darlington at 10.30am. "We don't bite and are a warm Christian family open to all," says a church leaflet.

Further information from Fr Westby on 01325 463349 - but it says that in the advertisement, of course.