IN North Ormesby main street almost every shop is steel shuttered, even King Tut's Bazaar. Since it's Sunday teatime, the only open doors are at the bookie's and the Italian takeaway, where specials of the day include chips, cheese and cheese and chips.

A lad of 14 or so strolls past in an Arsenal shirt. You get gallantry awards for less.

North Ormesby is effectively a suburb of Middlesbrough, built on iron and steel and with the now-dry docks not half a mile distant. Long out of sight and mind, it's now what they call an Urban Priority Area, among the top - bottom? - two per cent of the country's most deprived communities.

Graham Usher had been curate of Nunthorpe, among the Boro's greener areas, when asked in an episcopal sort of way to become Vicar of Holy Trinity, North Ormesby. It was 1999.

"I came down to have a look and was terrified," he admits. "The houses were boarded up and the problems not hard to see, but then I met the people and the stereotypes fell away. I glimpsed the glory of God."

Whilst it may not yet be said that the church overflows, congregations are 50 per cent up since his arrival.

Holy Trinity and its 170ft high tower are visible from many a mile. Few, however, could imagine the glories which lie beneath.

The church was consecrated in 1869 and destroyed in an arson attack in October 1977. "We were absolutely devastated, it took us a long time to get over the shock," says 76-year-old church treasurer Dorothy Poole, North Ormesby born and raised.

Within three years, however, a remarkable resurrection had taken place. A tranquil cloistered garden was created within the roofless shell of the nave - "an oasis of peace" says the Vicar, but how many even know of its existence? - and a new church with a sombrero-shaped roof built on the site of the sanctuary.

Now they plan a £750,000 multi-purpose Trinity Centre to replace the crumbling parish hall and to serve the whole area, one of many ways in which a vibrant people are engaging with the needs of their cast down community.

Its patrons are the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Whitby and Steve Gibson, the chairman of Middlesbrough Football Club. Its brief is to help turn the tide.

"North Ormesby has lost so many things, even the police station," says Graham Usher. "This is about giving it something back."

Those who suppose the church to be no longer relevant, to be choked by committees and fast disappearing up its own chasuble, should take their own preconceptions to Holy Trinity, North Ormesby.

The Middlesbrough Partnership has pledged £250,000, a Lottery decision is expected any day. A public relations company is giving its services free.

Much local fund raising remains to be done, however. That and the Queen's golden jubilee planted the seed of the flower festival which blossomed wondrously last weekend.

The church is next to the still used market place, across the road from the Market Tavern where Sunday karaoke is strung out from 4-11pm. Much of the housing which in the 1970s replaced the neighbourly streets of North Ormesby has already been demolished; others, boarded, await the same fate.

Twice in 30 years, the community is having its heart relentlessly ripped from it.

"Those housing policies were a disaster," says the Vicar. "I've stood alongside good, honest people who are again losing their homes. They deserve better than this."

Last weekend, however, their problems were forgotten, the cloisters fragrant and floribundant, the church rapturously decorated, other churches in the area united in the bright and the beautiful.

The Bishop of Whitby had been there in the morning; Fr David White, North Ormesby's Roman Catholic priest, delivers the sermon at a resounding evensong.

Whilst we sing of the "still small voice of calm", two useful looking lads patrol the car park outside, lest anyone be tempted to break the eighth commandment.

The two parish priests are the only professionals who remain in North Ormesby after 5pm. "In the church you live on the job," says Graham.

Like Zacchaeus - he who could not see Jesus for the press - Fr White is a very small man, hidden behind the lectern from which he is to preach. "I am always surprised that church furniture is the same size when God made his priests in all shapes and sizes," he says.

The sermon, on the need for prayer, lacks nothing. "It would be a bit of a tragedy," says Fr White, "if the Lord had to introduce himself on the day of judgment because we hadn't spent enough time with Him on earth."

Afterwards there's coffee and strawberries dipped in chocolate, a chance to admire the flower arrangements - on the theme How Great Thou Art - and to be reminded that, outside the cloistered walls, raw life goes on.

Only the previous evening an elderly parishioner had had £25 stolen in a burglary, the two parish priests are plagued by beggars - they never give money - from early morning. Heroin addiction, says Graham, is the root of most of North Ormesby's crime.

The church even lists an anti-crime project among its outreach. As they noted in the flower festival leaflet, Holy Trinity is blooming.

* Principal Sunday services at Holy Trinity are at 10am and 6pm. The Rev Graham Usher is on (01642) 271814. Cheques made payable to the Trinity Centre Appeal can be sent to The Treasurer, Holy Trinity Church, James Street, North Ormesby, Middlesbrough TS3 6LD.