From early beginnings rebelling against the 17th Century govenment, the Baptist Church in the North-East spread southwards. A Baptist church in the area had just celebrated its 350th anniversary, and the congregation seems far more content than its religious forerunners.

THE Muggleswick Plot may not be as well remembered or as coruscatingly catastrophic as the Gunpowder Plot, but its intentions - to put a bomb beneath the government - were explosive, nonetheless.

Muggleswick, it should be explained, is a dot of a place in the top left hand corner of Co Durham. In 1662, however, it was put very firmly on the map.

The Act of Uniformity had been passed, tolerating any religion so long as it was the King's. Dissent, and Dissenters, abounded. In Muggleswick, state papers later supposed, a series of "seditious" meetings was held with cataclysmic purpose.

The rebels even had a password - "God with us", of all the hugger-mugger heresies.

Founded or otherwise, the accusations threw the dear old County Palatine into a ferment. Trained bands were called out, leaders arrested and imprisoned, heads generally knocked together.

The immediate objectives, magistrates were told, were "to rise in rebellion against the present Government and to destroy the present parliament... to murder all bishops, deans and chapters and all ministers of the Church, to break all organs in pieces, to destroy the Common Prayer books and pull down all churches and, further, to kill the gentry who should either oppose them or not join with them in their design."

They first planned to fall upon Durham, it was alleged, "to seize any magazine that might be there, or money in any treasurer's hands, and to plunder the town."

Whether or not it proved a damp squib, no matter that even if there were a Plot someone appeared pretty quickly to have lost it, they were awfully big ideas for Muggleswick.

Regular readers will (of course) readily realise that there is a point to all of this. The Muggleswick malcontents were Baptists, the church having been brought to the North-East 12 years earlier by a missionary pastor called Thomas Tillam.

"A dark corner," wrote Tillam of his new territory, with little to indicate that it was a Christian country at all.

From Hexham, the Baptist movement spread southwards to Derwentside, in north-west Durham. Said to have been born in 1652, the infant church was centred not on Muggleswick, but on Rowley.

Until the Baptist Union of 1890 they were known as Particular (as opposed to General) Baptists. These days they can't be too particular because, a month after the 350th anniversary celebrations, Rowley church warmly welcomed the At Your Service column last weekend.

A little reception line was in place, like a Licensed Victuallers' ball. "Hopeless singer," we told the cheery chap giving out hymn books.

"You'll fit in nicely, then," he said.

The village now sits alongside the A68, between Tow Law and Castleside. Flower tubs beautify the verges, Tidy Village awards sit in the church porch.

There's a house with a pair of scales outside (metric, no doubt) selling fruit and veg, a post box dedicated to Queen Victoria.

Once there was a railway station, too, removed brick by brick to the Beamish Museum and re-opened in 1976 by Sir John Betjeman, the Poet Laureate, who'd written a tribute to the Stanhope and Tyne Railway.

Save that it rhymed "Rowley" with "holy" - which seemed entirely appropriate - it might have been written on the back of a packet of Woodbines.

In the early days the hamlet was called Cold Rowley, and that seemed fitting, too. The church's 300th anniversary history (from which much of this column is shamelessly filched) records not only that attendances were much higher in winter than in summer but that baptisms were often delayed because the nearby stream was frozen over.

They survived, nonetheless - "flourished in spite of persecution, or perhaps because of it," says F G Twitchett's 1952 masterwork - enjoyed an evangelical awakening when industry boomed around Consett and now, normally, address much smaller numbers.

The 350th anniversary had been hugely memorable, however, attracting as many souls to the nearby Royal Derwent Hotel because the church could never have accommodated them all.

A shuttle bus service had taken visitors between tea at the hotel and the flower festival at the church. "It was a beautiful weekend, magnificent," says Arthur Pearson from Castleside, for 30 years the church secretary.

The present building, up a little road that leads only to a farm, was built in 1824, replacing a smaller church completed 107 years earlier.

Thirteen are present last Sunday, mainly elderly and some from many a mile. They include Nancy Lister, who's 98, has read The Northern Echo almost all her life and now, at last, is in it.

The church has a long history of longevity - "they say it's the fresh air; there's plenty of it up here," says Arthur - though a little wayside pulpit outside suggests another reason.

"As God adds years to your life, ask him to add life to your years," it says.

The service lasts an hour and five minutes, of which 40 minutes is consumed by the Rev David Hudson's sermon, written out in longhand like they used to in the old religion.

His prayers are for the Commonwealth Games and for flood victims, for victims of legionnaire's disease and for those suffering from the drought in Africa.

"Lord, they would love to have some of the water that we have had this week," he says, a spiritual commentary on the ten o'clock news.

Afterwards they gather happily for a photograph: holy Rowley, content in their little plot.

* Principal Sunday services at Rowley Baptist Church are at 9.30am and 6pm.

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